Blind Sense/Sight Tracking

[Yogibear41]

Can a blind intelligent creature, without scent, use its blindsense/blindsight to track, if it has the tracking feat and a good survival modifier?

[Psyren]

Can a blind intelligent creature, without scent, use its blindsense/blindsight to track, if it has the tracking feat and a good survival modifier?

Probably not, and here's why - without scent, you have to ask the question of where the blindsense is coming from. Most likely it is super-hearing/echolocation of some kind, similar to what bats and darkmantles get.

The obvious problem then becomes, "how do you track a sound that isn't being made?" Tracking by scent and sight work because prints and smells remain after the source that created them is gone, but sounds don't.

[StoneCipher]

Probably not, and here's why - without scent, you have to ask the question of where the blindsense is coming from. Most likely it is super-hearing/echolocation of some kind, similar to what bats and darkmantles get.

The obvious problem then becomes, "how do you track a sound that isn't being made?" Tracking by scent and sight work because prints and smells remain after the source that created them is gone, but sounds don't.

By RAW it's murky, but I would say that to an extent, you could. Blindsight/sense does not go into how much detail you get when you see something. You could see a humanoid silhouette or you could see everything they are wearing, down to the last wrinkle.

If you get full detail, then you could by some means track things because you would be able to sense footprints and the like.

[Greenish]

If I had to rule on it, Blindsense certainly wouldn't allow tracking since it's far less precise. For Blindsight, I guess I could be convinced with a good enough description of how it works.

Blindsense also mentions "acute scent" as a potential source, which is a bit weird since Scent is it's own ability.

[Zaq]

Blindsight explicitly gives as much information as vision, arguably more. It's basically treated as "vision, only better." So I personally don't see why you couldn't use it to track.

Blindsense is another story. You can't actually see things that you're only picking up on blindsense. So I would call shenanigans on tracking via blindsense alone.

This is, admittedly, muddied by the fact that some forms of blindsense are "acute smell," and the scent ability IS explicitly good for tracking with. But blindsense is not scent, and so I say that if a creature doesn't have a good enough nose to have the scent ability, it can't track with it. That's part of what having the scent ability means, after all.

[Greenish]

Blindsight explicitly gives as much information as vision, arguably more.Well, not exactly. It can't discern colour or contrast, for one. Of course, that might not be relevant to tracking unless the intended quarry left behind a note saying where he's going.

[Vogonjeltz]

Can a blind intelligent creature, without scent, use its blindsense/blindsight to track, if it has the tracking feat and a good survival modifier?

Great question. I'm inclined to say no because of the missing visual components from both. Echolocation (blindsight) is the closest thing, but that's not precise enough to distinguish a print.

[Psyren]

Blindsight explicitly gives as much information as vision, arguably more. It's basically treated as "vision, only better." So I personally don't see why you couldn't use it to track.

It's treated that way only with respect to creatures, and sometimes objects. It does not say anything about detecting (for example) footprints in the snow, or smoke.

The closest you can get is "operate effectively without vision" - but full-on tracking is not a requisite of "operating," only avoiding bumping into things and getting blindsided.