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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nail" data-source="post: 1392139" data-attributes="member: 224">Hello All:Our group has been playing for about a year, and occasionally (very occasionally), the scent special ability has come up.  I've read over the core rules, tried them, and decided (arbitrarily, claim the players! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ) to call it a type of Spot check.  So, to see if an animal has "caught the scent", I'd roll a d20, add the animal's Spot bonus, and add a circumstance bonus from +4 to +8 (depending on smelliness of the target).My players claim: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">#1) "If yer gonna play it that way, right it down so we know what it is!", and</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">#2) "That's a total nerf!  Besides, the scent ability is not unbalanced or difficult.  Why change it?"</li> </ul>The first demand, as you may well imagine, is completely unreasonable, and I'll say no more about it.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":o" title="Eek!    :o"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":o" /> <EDIT>This was meant to be humorous, to poke fun at the fact that of course I should have written it down, and I (the DM) should not change rules without talking to my players about it.  Unfortunately, my statement above just got my players mad, rather than providing further humor.  Everyone else should take a lesson from this: yer writing ain't as clever as you think it is. </EDIT>The second point, however, is more interesting.  What does everyone else think?I think that all of these "special sense" abilities should be rolled into a skill check, just as normal vision is rolled into Spot, and hearing is what the Listen skill is all about.  Reason: why does things like Scent and Blindsight get to be automatic, whereas seeing (Spot) and hearing (Listen), is not?.....so: Is it a good idea to have skill checks for Blindsight?  For Scent?  For Temorsense?  What would be best? It could be a Spot roll, a new skill roll, or combine everything into a "Sense" skill roll.Or maybe the whole mess should be left alone.....Comments?</blockquote>

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