Something smells......

[Ranting Fool]

It's a useful enough ability and if you don't know what it gives Here would be a good place to look (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm) but one of my players keeps asking me random things that I don't know the answer too:smallbiggrin:

So with the aim of impartial fairness I thought I'd ask you lot.

Other then Track, and Detect the presence of invisible creatures what can an intelligent creature with scent do (Familiar with int 11+)

Can they "Know what race someone is/was?"
Can they "Tell the difference between different people and recognize them" (I.e BBEG in disguise)
Can they "Tell the difference between genders"
Can they "Recognize objects and items"
Can they "Smell Fear or gain bonus to sense motive"

[Flickerdart]

By RAW, the answer is no to all, but...

1) Different races probably have different smells, but having Scent doesn't automatically give you a reference catalogue. I'd say it gives them an opportunity to roll a Knowledge check (don't tell them which one or it's obvious).
2) If they've smelled the BBEG before, then sure, but a good disguiser would be smart enough to cover his scent with perfume or something when making their Disguise check, so at best they would get a tiny bonus on the Spot/Sense Motive against the Disguise.
3) See 1.
4) Considering that very few have a distinct smell, probably not.
5) No. That's not actually a thing, I don't think.

[hymer]

I agree with Flickerdart. On 4, I might make an exception for special circumstances. Say, one friend rubs his armpit with one end of the wand and another rubs the other end in his armpit. Now, for a while, you can recognize that particular wand, since it'll smell of these two people you know (provided you saw them do these unspeakable things with it).

[Doorhandle]

5) No. That's not actually a thing, I don't think.

Believe me, it is. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/smell-fear)

[Flickerdart]

Believe me, it is. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/smell-fear)
No, I mean in real life. As in, a random animal with a good sense of smell won't be able to smell fear on a person, and any impression to the contrary is probably due to their judgement about the person's general behaviour (not standing their ground and such). Linking a feat from a different system has nothing to do with how to use Scent by itself.

[Grinner]

No, I mean in real life. As in, a random animal with a good sense of smell won't be able to smell fear on a person, and any impression to the contrary is probably due to their judgement about the person's general behaviour (not standing their ground and such). Linking a feat from a different system has nothing to do with how to use Scent by itself.

Allegedly, humans emit certain pheromones when experiencing fear.

Source (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/04/smell-fear-research-pheromone)

[hymer]

It'll be the first pheromones humans are demonstrated to produce if these guys turn out to be right. It may turn out to be something other than actual pheromones.
Anyway, if we do emit pheromones upon being afraid, this will probably key off of adrenaline or some other heightened alert mechanism. As such, fear may well be indistinguishable olfactorily from anger, excitement, overwork, etc.

But all of that is of course guesswork so far. Mechanically, though, there's no bonus to Sense Motive or any such skill for having Scent.

Edit: Reading up on it, it seems my knowledge is getting outdated. It seems humans may well produce pheromones, things seem to be leaning that way. It's more disputed whether we can detect them, actually.

[nedz]

The rules are silent on smell, taste and touch.
They cover hearing (listen) and sight (spot).

So anything you do will be a house rule.
PF may handle this better with Perception, but I'm not an expert on PF ?

IRL creatures with Scent can follow an individual's tracks, so there must be some difference. The Track feat does model this, but that's based off survival for some reason.

[Phelix-Mu]

Objects and things can be recognized by the smells they acquire in the presence of things that smell. My sweater smells like me. Your shoes smell like you. Things handled by multiple people for more than a few rounds (or intentionally rubbed in smelly areas *wince*) have a confusing smell that would be difficult to suss out, but an intelligent creature that had available samples of the two handlers could probably figure it out. Normal animals and such just get confused by these tactics.

House rules is key in this area. Lack of a comprehensive approach to how a character senses the world around them is a big lapse in judgement over there at wotc (one of many such lapses).

[Pandiano]

Has anyone else here actually worked with a trained dog?

Race? No experience with that one :-) But see others
Recognize someone? Yes! Over several hundred metres if the wind is right. Familiarity with that person helps, but most trained dog need only a short "taste" to recognise a person.
Gender? Jepp, indeed, easily!
Objects? Only if trained to that specific object. Then easily. A police dog trained for drug searching can smell the dollar in your briefcase that was just briefly in contact with another dollar in the banking machine, that was used to sniff dope.
Fear? Yes! More than that. Even slight alteration in mood can be smelled through pheromones. Most dogs cept as pets ignore it due to respect of privacy and authority (or lack of training), but more sensible dogs react quite fast.

Honestly, the rules regarding 'scent' are hilariously underrepresented in comparison with RL animals.
And if you see what a trained dog can do with his sense of smell, the idea of an intelligent being with that ability is scary. Forget lying, hiding, disguising or running from/to someone who trained that ability.

RAW? I have no idea :-)

[White_Drake]

Eh, I doubt that it would be much different from trying to lie to, hide or disguise from, or escape an intelligent creature that trained in any of those areas.

[Pandiano]

Eh, I doubt that it would be much different from trying to lie to, hide or disguise from, or escape an intelligent creature that trained in any of those areas.

You have no idea. :-)
Lying is something I can only guess (since there are no intelligent 'scent' "races" in RL), but be sure, if you try to run, hide or try to disguise yourself, a trained dog WILL find you hilariously easy.
The thing is, you can't disguise smell, since you don't know what to look...erm...smell for.
There are some possibilities of making a dog lose track, very sure, but these need more cunning than losing a human tracker.

[navar100]

If you want to allow this it would make for a good house rule feat Improved Scent.

[Deepbluediver]

In terms of magical disguises, how would a human know what an elf would smell like to a dog? (or anything with Scent really)

I would probably rule that using magic can fairly easily (if the player thinks of it) alter how they smell. This means you might not be able to track or identify a player by scent alone, the same as with sight. If a player wants to disguise themselves as some one in particular by scent, then that is much more difficult, in line with any other methods of identify some one.

i.e. if a human wants to smell like a generic elf that's one step up, if they want to smell like a specific elf that's two steps

[Spuddles]

Perfume is like a disguise kit for your nose. I could see in a society where there are creatures with the senses of a dog, the subtle alchemy of perfumery is more than a luxury science.

[only1doug]

Brings to mind Terry Pratchett's discworld novels...


"someone dropped a peppermint bomb in the marketplace!"

[Karoht]

1-Can they "Know what race someone is/was?"
2-Can they "Tell the difference between different people and recognize them" (I.e BBEG in disguise)
3-Can they "Tell the difference between genders"
4-Can they "Recognize objects and items"
5-Can they "Smell Fear or gain bonus to sense motive"

I'm probably going to reference police dogs and tracking dogs a few times in this reply. By all means consider looking up their capabilities to build a frame of reference. Bearing in mind that there is a difference between a wild animal, a police sniffer, a police tracker, and some guy who leved up and took a feat. Those differences are probably where DM adjudication will be involved the most.

1-Maybe. If the person had a high enough relevant knowledge, maybe with a high enough survival to back it up, I would consider allowing it. But only with races the person was relatively familiar with. New races would maybe be somewhat distinct and foreign and new.
2-Depends on how distinct the two scents are and how good the recognition skills of the person. It would take a good memory, but they say that scent is very strongly linked to memory. A police dog (not a tracking dog, but a sniffer in an airport) can tell people apart by scent alone.
3-Dogs can. Absolutely. They do so via hormones released by the body. With Scent in DnD? Thats a DM call.
2a-Do perfumes mask your scent enough to not be detected? Not necessarily. See the mythbusters episode on tracking dogs, as well as the one about sniffer dogs.
4-Objects and items entirely depends. Telling a Wand from a Staff from a book? That one might be tricky. Telling a potion bottle from a flask of oil? Doable. Entirely depends on how potent the scent is, based on the given object. Mostly a DM call, but some things will be obvious. IE-Telling a flask of oil from a sword should be a no brainer.
Also, if it is a matter of objects in a bag, the olfactory senses of a dog are different from that of a person. We smell things as a blend of smells, mostly because our senses are not sophisticated enough to separate them out. A dog smells them all differently. If you want a great example, check out the mythbusters episode about the drug sniffing dogs. They put a pouch of a controlled substance in container filled with bleach in another container filled with coffee grounds, the dog still finds the container and knows that the substance is inside.
5-Absolutely, yes. Evidence of this has already been linked in the thread, but check out wiki if you want to know more.