Your body odor reveals your hiding spot!

[Barius]

A small conversation in chat sparked by Castillo got me thinking. Could this be a viable feature?

There are arguments against this kind of thing being valid in certain areas, due to one factor or another, but I like the concept well enough that I thought I'd move it here to see if it sparked any interest in the GMs' eyes.

Could some areas reasonably be impossible/difficult to hide in due to a strong smell on your person revealing where you are?

[Lun]

The exact statement was...
"A strange scent wafts over to your nose. You look closer and you see Castillo hiding in the bushes!"

My counter argument was something like zis:
[CHAT - Castillo]: Rooms in the game aren't a real cell. Er, basically it goes a little like this: We're in the Abandoned Caravans, someone's hiding but they stink real bad, right?
[CHAT - Castillo]: Who's to say they aren't skulking in a bush far far away from you and chillaxing?

The argument is about diffusion, basically. Sure, in a sanitary environment where you're in close quarters, it'd be impossible to hide. But in a large environment with ambient scents, it would be foolhardy to imagine you can track someone with just their B.O. (Unless you're a bloodhound)

Look at one of the tunnels made by a humongous worm. That place REEKS of rotting and disgusting scents. I wouldn't be able to use my nose at all in that situation.
What if I was stinky? Then I would smell my own B.O. and not much else.
Haiban perfumery, someone sprayed me and now all I smell is... perfume.

[qinweiqi]

I've thought about this too. Though the one I would suggest first is that maybe intelligent foes should start to get paranoid/search around when hidden people are carrying on a conversation in the room.

[sona]

giving this a bit of thought, it sounds neat, but unrealistic outside of urban environments. Unless something is truly, and gut wrenchingly putrid, you're probably not going to smell it unless you get preeeetty close. And given the distance from one 'room' to another is a league, well, unless there is some local distance stuff put in that isn't covered by search/perception, I don't think scent should play a factor in the hide and seek game. Inside urban environments though, this sounds like a wonderful idea, noticing that guy creeping in the corner of the inn, hood up, and smelling like he hasn't showered for a week and half, yeah, good chance you'll notice a stench in urban settings. Just my two riln on the subject

[Barius]

giving this a bit of thought, it sounds neat, but unrealistic outside of urban environments. Unless something is truly, and gut wrenchingly putrid, you're probably not going to smell it unless you get preeeetty close. And given the distance from one 'room' to another is a league, well, unless there is some local distance stuff put in that isn't covered by search/perception, I don't think scent should play a factor in the hide and seek game. Inside urban environments though, this sounds like a wonderful idea, noticing that guy creeping in the corner of the inn, hood up, and smelling like he hasn't showered for a week and half, yeah, good chance you'll notice a stench in urban settings. Just my two riln on the subject

The exact statement was...
"A strange scent wafts over to your nose. You look closer and you see Castillo hiding in the bushes!"

My counter argument was something like zis:
[CHAT - Castillo]: Rooms in the game aren't a real cell. Er, basically it goes a little like this: We're in the Abandoned Caravans, someone's hiding but they stink real bad, right?
[CHAT - Castillo]: Who's to say they aren't skulking in a bush far far away from you and chillaxing?

The argument is about diffusion, basically. Sure, in a sanitary environment where you're in close quarters, it'd be impossible to hide. But in a large environment with ambient scents, it would be foolhardy to imagine you can track someone with just their B.O. (Unless you're a bloodhound)

Look at one of the tunnels made by a humongous worm. That place REEKS of rotting and disgusting scents. I wouldn't be able to use my nose at all in that situation.
What if I was stinky? Then I would smell my own B.O. and not much else.
Haiban perfumery, someone sprayed me and now all I smell is... perfume.

You're both responding as if I'm suggesting a blanket penalty on every single location in the game.

I'm not.

I was just throwing it out there to see if the GMs thought any part of the concept sounded interesting.

[Lacie]

I think it should definitely give a sizeable penalty to stealth, though not outright reveal you. Maybe have a message that can occasionally pop up about a bad smell if someone smelly is hidden in the room, or even if they're not hidden, but also have this and similar messages not be totally unheard of in most areas.

[Kiyaani]

I think there's already plenty of penalties to stealth. In most places there's a general crowd population or outside smells that, as was already mentioned, would probably make any amount of B.O. slightly normalized. Especially if the person doing the smelling is also smelly. The only thing I would think would 'out' you would be strong perfumes or other unnaturally strong scents like skunk or poo smell.

[Dorn]

Totally want this just so Dorn can comment, "You stink like [crap]." next time Kiyaani stealths past.

Beyond that, stealth already seems to have quite a lot of demands to making it "work" with a lot of restrictions based on the Guild, the environment, and armor.

To get it to work even somewhat reasonably well, I think you'd have to look at a lot of different factors and add more environmental conditions to rooms such as "Open/Enclosed" and a scale of background smell.

If the area is open, your own "smell rating" has to be waaaay over the background smell for it to be noticeable.
If the area is enclosed, there is a much higher chance of noticing a faint odor but that is it. You'd still have to search the person out but get a bonus to your perception.

Want to get even more complex, could look at having elements of "smell" instead of having a basic rating and the more you smell like your background environment the harder it is to notice you via scent. This only becomes useful when added with below though...

What would be kind of neat about this, is you could then start adding abilities based off of it. I'm not sure what exact Guilds would even have something like it... but Canim might track a lot by scent. Be pretty cool getting specific scents made to track your smell so you could move around animals/beasts/canim who use smell to find their target.

Question is. Would it be worth it?

[Kiyaani]

I'm offended. I never sneak past you and I never smell like '[crap]'. I smell like sunshine and roses and possibly dirt. Jaster's the one always handling poo.

[Jaster]

I don't have sunshine in my bag.

[jilliana]

My question is: What would really define sweaty and smelly? Some people don't really have a great sense of smell, thus don't react the same as when a person with a better sense of smell would.

I agree with Kiyaani in that there are already plenty of stealth penalties. I'd rather consider BO something as common and routine in the Lost Lands, whether it's bad or good is up for anyone to determine and thus doesn't need extra special attention.