[P:ES] Smell: military advice vs. RAW distance penalties

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

It seems like the idea of multiplying range modifiers is pretty alien

Why did that come up? It's just a large positive or negative modifier.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Why did that come up? It's just a large positive or negative modifier.

From this:

Originally Posted by johndallman

Another option: the right wind conditions and direction can alter effective range for scent by factors of 100 or more.

'By a factor of X' seems to mean multiplying. Emily asked why I consider it unGURPSy, and this is the only instance of 'unGURPSy' in this line of discussion up to that point.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

From this:

'By a factor of X' seems to mean multiplying.

x100 range is a -12 modifier. /100 is a +12.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

x100 range is a -12 modifier. /100 is a +12.

For Size/Speed and Range Table modifiers, such as vision, not for -1/yard modifiers such as canonical default/normal human smell.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

For Size/Speed and Range Table modifiers, such as vision, not for -1/yard modifiers such as canonical default/normal human smell.

Oh, I ignored that rule; smell should be on the SSR table, it's just that humans are really bad at it.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Oh, I ignored that rule; smell should be on the SSR table, it's just that humans are really bad at it.

Ah, so you're with the 'Humans should start with one level of Long-Range Smell for free' variant. That was unexpected - you seem to be mostly sceptical of human (and non-human) abilities.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Ah, so you're with the 'Humans should start with one level of Long-Range Smell for free' variant.

Sort of. I also think the modifier for discriminatory smell should be around +10. The human sense of smell doesn't follow a different scaling law than other animals, we're just really bad at it.

Honestly, I can't even think of a sense where -1/hex is appropriate; I'd eliminate the entire concept.

[scc]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

It seems like the idea of multiplying range modifiers is pretty alien, coming up only in the odd case of Zen Archery/Marksmanship, and IIRC some obscure earthquake-related spell in Magic, both feeling like 3e'isms that survived from the Era of Myriad Exceptions.

The only two spells that mention earthquakes are Predict Earth Movement and Earthquake itself, I think you may be talking about the later, which divides distance by 20 when determining skill modifier (Which could be used to make battle magic work)