Scent, Spot, Listen, Blindsight....as skill checks?

[Nail]

I guess that's part of what really bugs me about the Core RAW. A 20th level PC (Rogue, Ranger, whatever) with maxed Hide & Move Silently skills can't really sneak around most foes worth $#!+.

Exactly! That's what I'm "looking ahead" to see.

The basic idea of an Awareness skill (one that combines all the senses) is a good one, both simple and comprehensive enough to use in play. Nifft's idea of using bonuses looks good too.

...and of course, all of this requires a new "opposing skill". (Monte's Stealth skill looks like a perfect candidate.) Arguing that we don't have a "move sentlessly" skill and therefore can't have have a Scent skill-equivalent....is a bit silly.

So....if a rogue has maxed out his Stealth skill, we assume that he is hard to:

• smell - he keeps some Speed Stick handy,
• see - he knows how to stay out of sight with 3l33t ninja skills,
• hear - see the ninja reference above, and
• feel - as in, "feel the vibrations of his movement". One assumes you'll still be able to feel his blade just fine.

...which would mean (among other things) that a 20th level rogue might be worth playing! Sounds good!

 

[jessemock]

that a near-epic individual trained to move super stealthily actually have some reasonable chance to fool a dog's nose? a bat's blindsight? or a thoqqua's tremorsense? All of those creatures have 3 HD or less, and yet each can pinpoint our super-sneaky dude doing his best in less than 30 seconds.

That's true, but, then, that's one reason we domesticated dogs...

I'd ask the PC either to kill the dog, before it notices him or to come up with a clever way to mask his scent.

'Awareness' vs. 'Sneakiness' makes some sense and frees up a whole skill's worth of points, but to extend it to scent? For one thing, how to distinguish one's ability with scent from one's ability with vision? Your average humanoid shouldn't have the ability to do more than creatures with the 'scent' ability--what should they have the ability to do?

Conversely, training to avoid humanoids is quite different than training to avoid animals (or creatures with the scent ability). Witness hunters who dress in bright orange, but coat themselves in deer musk. To me, that argues for two quite distinct skill sets (and equipment sets).

Arguing that we don't have a "move sentlessly" skill and therefore can't have have a Scent skill-equivalent....is a bit silly.

Which is why I'm not doing so. My point is that there has to be some kind of reasonable way for the character to mask himself from creatures with the scent ability (and, needless to say, the PC must know that this is necessary) and that this is no simple thing.

Either you fold 'scentlessness' into Sneak, which is questionable on grounds of "well...how?"

Or you come up with another skill specific to the action.

Or you skip the whole thing and ask the PC to demonstrate some creativity, which brings us back to:

I've always loved Arnold coming out of the mud wall to take the Predator, despite his high-tech & near-magical infravision, by surprise. That's Sneaking

Well; Rambo did that in II, actually; Arnold hid in mud and then covered himself in clay in Predator, without ever leaping out of a wall of the stuff. But here's the thing: yes; that's cool, but it's also not something a PC can do all the time (or would need to). When the Guv-to-be covered himself in clay, it was a specific response to a specific threat, not an application of a skill. Arguably, a PC could cover himself in muck to avoid advertising himself via scent. You don't need a skill for that.

 

[Tonguez]

'Awareness' vs. 'Sneakiness' makes some sense and frees up a whole skill's worth of points, but to extend it to scent? For one thing, how to distinguish one's ability with scent from one's ability with vision? Your average humanoid shouldn't have the ability to do more than creatures with the 'scent' ability--what should they have the ability to do?.

The Scent Feat could be used to give both a +2 Scent bonus and to allow tracking by scent

and

Why shouldn't a fantasy humanoid be able to do more than creatures with the 'scent' ability?

Its already been established that Gnomes have a good sense of smell so why not make this racial bonus a real ability?

All it would really require is the creature desriptions for creatures with Scent to include a +x scent bonus to 'awareness skill' just like the current descriptions give for Spot etc

 

[StAlda]

I actually have Spot, Smell, Feel/Touch, Listen, Taste and Jump as Pseudo-skills. They act as regular skills except you can't put any ranks in them. The only bonus you get to your roll is from Ability scores and Feats (like Skill Focus). IMC I have Perception as an Ability score, the first five listed above use it for determining bonuses, and Strength for Jump.

 

[Nail]

....Or you skip the whole thing and ask the PC to demonstrate some creativity, ...

Creativity is good.

Three points:

#1) Part of the "rub" here is this: after about 10th level, the Rogue's Hide skill is useless, in part because of all of the creatures that "automatically" detect him. Case in Point: Blindsight.

Is there a good reason for this? (Probably the answer is: ease of use. It's true my mind-reading powers aren't what they were, DrSpunj.)

#2) Also: asking the players to be "creative" when hiding begs the question: "What are ranks in hiding good for, if not for knowing of ways to hide?" Or "Why should I, a 21st century couch potato, know more about hiding than my 18th level rogue?"

#3) Finally: Why is it that a creature can't automatically see something, but can automatically smell, blindsight, tremorsense it....even if the smell (for example) is faint or hidden? Why not have a skill roll for that? After all, does your dog Fido sense smell as well as the basset hound down the block, or that ancient wyrm dragon over on 33rd street? (You know: the one who rents the large warehouse with "Dragon Rulz" spray-painted on the side.)

Adendum: I want new rules to be simple, possibly even simpler than what I started with. Having a separate "see" and "hear" and "smell" and "tremorsense" skills is not simpler (and requires more skill points!), and it's not a better system than what we have presently. IMHO, YMMV.

 

[LightPhoenix]

See, part of having twenty ranks in Hide/MS should include things like knowing how to mask your scent, knowing how to counter echolocation and sensing vibrations, and the like. I mean, I could tell you a couple of ways to mask your scent, and I only have the most cursory knowledge. Someone who is a master at it should be able to counter all but the most equally skilled.

Part of the reason for this, in my opinion, is that at first they wanted something that could trump a Rogue's sneakiness, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. However, I think a lot of DMs can't (or don't want to) really handle that aspect of a Rogue character (should they choose to use it), and so more and more of a "screw the Rogue" mentality developed.

An excellent example of the problem I think is if you read Wulf's Story Hour, where Wulf's sneakiness is constantly being trumped by Blindsight, among other things.

[EDIT] Oh yeah, solutions. I think a general Awareness or Perception skill opposed by a Stealth skill is the simplest solution. I would grant bonuses to Awareness checks based on conditions and feats - Low Light Vision and Darkvision might give a +4 in low light conditions, In pitch black, Darkvision gives +4. A creature with blindsight may get a +4 bonus so long as conditions are adequate - something with echolocation in a quiet area (a cave, say).

A big part of the problem, IMO, is that Blindsight is relatively undefined. How Blindsight works for a given creature should be specifically delineated, including how to counter it. Obviously this would include bonuses granted if you used the idea above.

 

[Terath Ninir]

Your players are complaining about you making a rules change that *benefits* them? Unless you've got a very odd game, *they* don't have Scent or any of the special senses, so this change only affects monsters.

If they're not sensible enough to accept changes in their favour, just go back to the old way and go for the old TPK. Maybe that will get them to quit bitchin' about your rules changes.

 

[DrSpunj]

An excellent example of the problem I think is if you read Wulf's Story Hour, where Wulf's sneakiness is constantly being trumped by Blindsight, among other things.

Exactly! I think his SH can take credit for getting me (and I think Nail also, CMIIW) thinking about this, or at least added more fuel to the mental fire.

[EDIT] Oh yeah, solutions. I think a general Awareness or Perception skill opposed by a Stealth skill is the simplest solution. I would grant bonuses to Awareness checks based on conditions and feats - Low Light Vision and Darkvision might give a +4 in low light conditions, In pitch black, Darkvision gives +4. A creature with blindsight may get a +4 bonus so long as conditions are adequate - something with echolocation in a quiet area (a cave, say).

I only partly agree with you here, LP. While your blindsight example is essentially what Nifft proposes above, the +4 for Low-light & Darkvision I don't think are necessary or merited.

I think there are two general ways to "improve" upon your Awareness skill. Things like Skill Focus(Awareness) add a mechanical bonus to all the rolls. Alertness obviously goes away, but I'm sure we can come up with a creative list of feats that give a +2 bonus to Awareness and a +2 to some other skill if we really wanted. However, while things like Darkvision, Low Light Vision, etc. can give a bonus to the roll if multiple Senses are being used like Nifft suggests above, sometimes (more importantly) they are the only thing that allows you to make an Awareness check at all.

For instance, my group last night entered a cavern with a large, very fast-moving underground river. Because of the loud rapids in the chamber Listen checks were essentially not possible. As the party consists of all PC races and a Kobold, no other Senses beyond Vision and Hearing were in play. The only light sources they had were a couple Everburning Torches. Had the party been limited to Humans & Halflings they could not have even attempted Awareness checks for anything approaching them beyond the 20' of Light. Since the party contains an Elf with Low-light Vision that character gets an Awareness check for anything within 40', and the Dwarf and Kobold with Darkvision are allowed checks for anything within 60'.

None of them get the +4 bonus that Nifft was proposing above because they aren't able to bring any more than a single Sense to bear, but what kind of Vision they have definitely makes a huge difference as to whether or not they can make an Awareness check at all.

Thanks.

DrSpunj

 

[Nail]

...I think <Wulf's> SH can take credit for getting me (and I think Nail also, CMIIW) thinking about this, or at least added more fuel to the mental fire.

Absolutely.

Frankly, it was the first time I'd ever "seen" a mid- to high- level rogue(fighetr!) in action. And it got me thinking....gee, that blindsight is pretty good....huh, lots of bad guys get that.....would you look at that: scent screws players pretty well too...etc.

....while things like Darkvision, Low Light Vision, etc. can give a bonus to the roll if multiple Senses are being used like Nifft suggests above, sometimes (more importantly) they are the only thing that allows you to make an Awareness check at all.

Right.

Without darkvision, you can't use your vision sense in the dark, etc.....

Moreover, as a skill check, you could potentially smell someone from further away. (I'm reminded of the ole' Wolverine comics from the 80's.) Or a spider could tremorsense an opponent further than 60ft....with a range penalty, of course.

On an Awareness skill check, you'd get bonuses from ranks, ability score (Wis), and feats, plus circumstance bonuses if more than one sense strongly can come into play. (IOW, above a "baseline", as Nifft suggests.) To keep things simple, it would still be a straight -1/10 feet away.

 

[jessemock]

#1) Part of the "rub" here is this: after about 10th level, the Rogue's Hide skill is useless, in part because of all of the creatures that "automatically" detect him. Case in Point: Blindsight.

I think this depends in part on how one adjudicates blindsight and how the character is hiding.

How does Blindsight work, in other words?

Also: asking the players to be "creative" when hiding begs the question: "What are ranks in hiding good for, if not for knowing of ways to hide?" Or "Why should I, a 21st century couch potato, know more about hiding than my 18th level rogue?"

Because Disguise Scent (or whatever) isn't a skill yet; it's presented as a challenge to players. You're saying you'd rather deal with it through a skill check. This is no more or less reasonable than having, say, Diplomacy as a skill check.

It's reasonable to say that a PC that deals with Blindsight and Scent all the rest would naturally develop ways to counter them as part of his natural skill set.

It's also reasonable to say that players either should or may deal with these challenges directly.

From this angle, it's a question of style.

Why is it that a creature can't automatically see something, but can automatically smell, blindsight, tremorsense it....even if the smell (for example) is faint or hidden? Why not have a skill roll for that?

Well; creatures can automatically see and hear things. The point is that there is no skill that currently counters scent etc.; that's why they're automatic. No one tries to 'hide' from them.

I imagine that the reason for not presenting Scent as a (counterable) skill is because it is so different than seeing and hearing. None of the core PC races has a scent ability; it's simply not in the typical experience of a PC (or player), as things now stand.

Simply adding it in to an Awareness skill that takes seeing and hearing as its base will prove problematic, at least to the extent that it will require a number of situational modifiers (wind, medium, potency, etc.) to provide even a minimal degree of verisimilitude (rather than simply balance with player expectations for high-level PCs).

As to differences in ability, ranges deal with this issue to some extent.

Adendum: I want new rules to be simple, possibly even simpler than what I started with. Having a separate "see" and "hear" and "smell" and "tremorsense" skills is not simpler (and requires more skill points!), and it's not a better system than what we have presently.

That makes sense, but any reduction in complexity on the skill side will require some increase in complexity on the situational side. You'll have to begin to keep wind direction in mind and so on. This is really no different than keeping track of, say, illumination, but is in addition to it.