03-30-2015, 02:11 AM | #1 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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[P:ES] Smell: military advice vs. RAW distance penalties
Greetings, all!
Powers: Enhanced Senses makes Smell rolls take a penalty equal to the number of yards to the source of the smell, unless one takes superhuman smelling perks. However, I've encountered advice in several military primers to avoid smoking, because they make people detectable by smell at huge distances, as long as the detector is a non-smoker who spent significant time outdoors. Wordings tend to be something like this: Quote:
So, which one should it be? Thanks in advance! |
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03-30-2015, 02:54 AM | #2 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: [P:ES] Smell: military advice vs. RAW distance penalties
Another option: the right wind conditions and direction can alter effective range for scent by factors of 100 or more.
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03-30-2015, 03:08 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Re: [P:ES] Smell: military advice vs. RAW distance penalties
As johndallman says: There is a huge difference in how smells carry depending on the wind conditions and wind direction.
Also there is a huge difference in human senses, smell included. The military advice you speak about is in a way the same as much other military advice based on the understanding that Murphy is always involved in military operations and that way too many troops try to avoid using their head for thinking. Thus it is a combination of prepare for worst possible cases and your troops doing stupid things... So while in average situations you cannot smell things that far there are cases when you can and the troops are not going to know/think about when the risk is there so better to err on the side of safety. |
03-30-2015, 05:05 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: [P:ES] Smell: military advice vs. RAW distance penalties
All passive senses (which includes stuff like vision and hearing too) described as having ranges are *physically wrong* playable approximations. A passive sense always has a range of zero, it can't detect anything that isn't in contact with the sensor. Any time it is described with one, you are looking at somebody's approximation of how far a typical signal remains above the detection threshold under some set of conditions. Nobody lists the range of vision is not 2.5 million light years, even though most people can see something (M31 in Andromeda) that far away in certain conditions (starting with it's dark and clear, so less than half the time....)
In this case it's a combination of a much stronger signal (you probably should get a fairly large bonus for smelling burning tobacco) and a focusing effect (being "downwind" means effective odor source distances are reduced by something like the ratio of the "normal" mixing rate (whatever that is, it isn't going to be anything related to diffusion that's ridiculously slow for odor molecules despite it being commonly cited in these sorts of discussions) to the wind speed.
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03-30-2015, 06:58 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: [P:ES] Smell: military advice vs. RAW distance penalties
Reversing the roles, try and see if some military source can tell you by what range, as the detector, you should expect to have noticed the cigarette smoke. I'd expect a much smaller value.
It does seem like square root makes a more reasonable penalty, and if the wind is on your side, you could say square root of the width of the area the smell's been blankleted over by the time it reaches you. By RAW, though, it seems like you're out of luck. |
03-30-2015, 07:58 AM | #6 |
Join Date: Mar 2015
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Re: [P:ES] Smell: military advice vs. RAW distance penalties
Cigarette smoke is certainly detectable 1/4 mile or further away. On a kayak you can smell it coming from other boats or people on the shore for amazing distances. (Even stranger, you can use the smell of outboard motor exhaust to track a boat over open water in the dark).
I don't have a particularly good sense of smell -- in fact, my wife says it's pretty bad. But when I'm outside for awhile it seems to get very honed. This might be more of an environmental awareness thing, rather than a skill or special ability. Maybe a Survival (Terrain) roll to notice something out of place for that locale would be a good way to model it. |
03-30-2015, 11:21 AM | #7 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [P:ES] Smell: military advice vs. RAW distance penalties
Smell is weird even by the standards of senses, because it's very slow, extremely directional, and has a significant persistence. That cigarette a quarter mile away might be something you can detect, but probably 5-15 minutes after it was actually smoked.
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03-30-2015, 01:31 PM | #8 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: [P:ES] Smell: military advice vs. RAW distance penalties
Now I don't know how to react. On one hand, looks like you're onto something with this idea. On the other, it looks extremely unGURPSy.
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03-30-2015, 01:32 PM | #9 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: [P:ES] Smell: military advice vs. RAW distance penalties
Quote:
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03-30-2015, 03:05 PM | #10 | |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: [P:ES] Smell: military advice vs. RAW distance penalties
Quote:
Scents are unusual in that not all parts move at the same speed or last equally as long. They separate making identification much harder over time and disatance.
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