Scent (3.5e Skill)
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Scent (Wis)[edit]
Use this skill to identify objects, people, creatures, or plants by smell or identify smells carried on the wind. Creatures with a sufficiently keen sense of smell are able to use their nose just as well as they use their eyes and ears bringing them as much information about the world around them by the smells around them.
Check[edit]
Make checks to identify a friend by smell in a dark room, detect approaching enemies, sniff out hidden foes, or track by sense of smell.
Your scent check is either made against a DC which reflects how difficult it is to pick up a specific scent or how difficult it is to identify what the scent is. Your DM may decide to make a Scent check for you, so that you do not know whether you not smelling something means that nothing is out of the ordinary to smell, or that you failed the check.
Table refers to detection of scents carried on the air.
| Scent DC | Task |
|---|---|
| 0 | Rotting corpse within 10 feet. |
| 5 | Object burning within 10 feet. |
| 10 | Scented plants within 10 feet. |
| 12 | Clean human within 10 feet. |
| 14 | Water within 10 feet. |
| 15 | Distinguish species or material type. |
| 19 | Identifying a single familiar scent 1 foot away on a busy well-traveled road. |
| 20 | Distinguish specific species, race, or material. |
| 25 | Identifying the specific region a species or material originates from. |
A specific race, type, or material can only be identified if the character knows about that race, type, or material and what they generally smell like. Otherwise, all they can identify is that it is not something they know. The same applies with identifying region. If the character knows nothing of a specific region, they would not be able to identify if a particular item originated from a particular region.
There are sometimes modifiers which make scents easier or harder to detect.
| Condition | DC Adjustment |
|---|---|
| Per 10 minutes of age, up to 1 hour | +2, up to +10 |
| Per hour of age | +1 |
| Per 10 feet of distance from the source | +5 |
| Personal familiarity with a race | −5 |
A character who is attempting to detect a scent on an object or person they have their nose close to does not suffer any distance penalties to their scent check, as the object they are sniffing is the source and thus effectively is at 0-1 feet form the character.
Distance modifiers are halved if downwind of the scent and doubled if upwind of the scent.
Action[edit]
Varies. Every time you have a chance to smell something in a reactive manner, you can make a scent check without any actions. Trying to smell something you field to smell previously is a move action.
Try Again[edit]
Yes. You can try to smell something that you failed to smell previously with no penalty.
Special[edit]
This skill can be used untrained.
If you have the Alertness feat, you get a +2 bonus on scent checks.
Creatures with the Scent ability or special property can gain a +10 racial bonus to scent checks.
A sleeping character can make a scent check at a −10 penalty. A successful check awakens the sleeper.
The Disguise skill can be used to mask or otherwise hide a person's scent to prevent them from being identified or tracked by scent.
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