I noticed that they removed those special traits from the 5e’24 monsters’ stat blocks. The removal of the Keen Senses trait I understand since that would be easy enough to represent with expertise in Perception since it’s all the creature’s senses all the time. But Keen Hearing and Keen Smell are far more situational and therefore don’t apply all the time, so simply giving the creature expertise won’t do. Now, presumably they omitted those special traits on the premise that most DMs didn’t really use them, and players abused them. I guess DMs didn’t use them either because they didn’t want to or didn’t remember to, and some players will abuse anything they can which is why we can’t have nice things. As a DM I for one actually did use those traits though, so it’s fairly glaring that those creatures no longer have them, and as a player I did utilize them whenever my familiars had them, but I wouldn’t say I abused them (at least not by my reconning at any rate), so I feel it’s an overall net loss to the game.
What about you? What do you think? Did you use those traits as a DM? Did your players abuse them? I want to know your experiences and most of all, I want to know if you think they should still be there or be added back?
Keen Smell was always a bit of a problem, because realistically for many animals it isn't just "can do something humans can do, only somewhat better", it's "can do something humans can't do at all".
I don't think I've ever seen it come up at all as a player or DM (I have very limited experience in the latter though). I did notice that the 2024 Wolf has higher perception than its 2014 version (+5 vs +3) and Darkvision where the old one didn't. The Mastiff has the same changes, so I'm thinking they wrapped those special senses up into those normal bonuses to sort of unify the rules more.
Keen Smell was always a bit of a problem, because realistically for many animals it isn't just "can do something humans can do, only somewhat better", it's "can do something humans can't do at all".
I can appreciate that. I do have two questions though:
Was it really an issue? What I mean is, what about it being something that people couldn’t do made it a problem if a familiar or a PC in wild shape could do it?
People can certainly smell stuff, some better than others. I once dated a woman for a few months who was vision impaired and had learned to utilize her other senses in ways most folks don’t need or think to. Her sense of smell was keen enough that she could always tell whenever I entered a room without seeing me, even a crowded bar, just because she could discern my distinct odor from everyone and everything else’s in the room. Everybody has a distinct smell, we just mostly don’t notice it and when we do we usually try to stop it or cover it up. But it’s there. Try smelling a loved one’s recently worn clothing and you can’t miss it. So why is it a problem if some creatures in D&D can simply do it better?
Personally, they were one of those things which I found situational at best and often forgot in the heat of the moment. More importantly, I just don’t think they add much to the game - most animals with a keen sense of smell or such tend to have other keen senses as well, so a straight bonus to perception would be perfectly serviceable. I can also see specific senses causing problems when some rules lawyer tries to argue their character having just rubbed themselves in mud should be able to defeat an animal’s senses.
Notably, we also do not have the full Monster Manual at this time - it very well could be the case the MM has animals with heightened particularized senses, but they didn’t want players to have options where they try to argue with the DM to get a greater advantage than the spell was designed to provide.
All told, this is one of those changes I just can’t find myself caring about. If it was causing problems or just forgotten at other tables, I suppose makes sense to me they’d make something easier to remember and less prone to argument. Plus, it is D&D. If I as the DM want to add something like this in, nothing stops me, so no real skin off my nose if it is gone from official creatures.
Was it really an issue? What I mean is, what about it being something that people couldn’t do made it a problem if a familiar or a PC in wild shape could do it?
The issue was that "advantage on checks" was a bad way of implementing the effect, it should be a sense with its own rules.
Yes we use smell and hearing in campaigns (but we also apply environmental factors like weather). I have had players decide to hunt and set traps for marauding beasts and not cover their scent. I as a player failed numerous animal handling checks and argued loudly and at length with my pack mule - sound carries
On a memorable trek to meet with a tribe of lizard folk I had a player decide to butcher a pig as a gift for the lizards and lug the meat for days through the hot and humid swamp - players wondered about the perception checks they were rolling for until they were attacked by a troll and a gentle prod from the DM and an insight check as to why they were attacked reveled that they positively stunk of dead pig and had for days as the uncured meat got nice and warm. Was it situational? Yes. Did the rule make for a great session? Yes, yes it did.
WotC removing environmental factors is i believe, detrimental to the game
We never really used it. I always thought it was kind of a strange thing. They never really clearly established how far you can see, and there were lots of arguments about how far away you can hear something like a V component in a spell. So how far away before smell kicks in as the main way to notice something? And, of course some smells and sounds are more noticeable than others.
They’d need to start getting pretty specific about ranges for different senses before it could be useful, or at least useful without arguments at the table, and that really not something they’ve worried about in this edition.
Yes we use smell and hearing in campaigns (but we also apply environmental factors like weather). I have had players decide to hunt and set traps for marauding beasts and not cover their scent. I as a player failed numerous animal handling checks and argued loudly and at length with my pack mule - sound carries
On a memorable trek to meet with a tribe of lizard folk I had a player decide to butcher a pig as a gift for the lizards and lug the meat for days through the hot and humid swamp - players wondered about the perception checks they were rolling for until they were attacked by a troll and a gentle prod from the DM and an insight check as to why they were attacked reveled that they positively stunk of dead pig and had for days as the uncured meat got nice and warm. Was it situational? Yes. Did the rule make for a great session? Yes, yes it did.
WotC removing environmental factors is i believe, detrimental to the game
That's what situational advantage and disadvantage are for; the DM can still say "okay, you're trying to Stealth past guard dogs but didn't wash off after coming through the sewers, you all have Disadvantage on the roll". Environmental factors are something the DM is supposed to take into account while running an ability check.
I can't say those features have ever come up, either as a DM or in a campaign while I was playing.
I suppose that's why they got rid of them, if my experience is anything like the average person.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
We never really used it. I always thought it was kind of a strange thing. They never really clearly established how far you can see, and there were lots of arguments about how far away you can hear something like a V component in a spell. So how far away before smell kicks in as the main way to notice something? And, of course some smells and sounds are more noticeable than others.
They’d need to start getting pretty specific about ranges for different senses before it could be useful, or at least useful without arguments at the table, and that really not something they’ve worried about in this edition.
Actually, the distances for vision and hearing are on the DM’s Foldout Screen, Thrid or Fourth panel, 2/3rds or 3/4 way down.
Information that should have been printed in the 2024 DMG and PHB. Nope, Neither one. On a foldout dm screen almost no one knows about.
2024 rules, nothing in the PHB I presume? The 2024 DMG, I doubt it but you never know. After that, I would think it should be in some form of the core rules, but we shall wait and see.
Now as for the Keen Senses , you ether knew the player was going to abuse the ability constantly, or they have it but barely remember to use it. It’s another DM tool getting tossed for page space.
Yes we use smell and hearing in campaigns (but we also apply environmental factors like weather). I have had players decide to hunt and set traps for marauding beasts and not cover their scent. I as a player failed numerous animal handling checks and argued loudly and at length with my pack mule - sound carries
On a memorable trek to meet with a tribe of lizard folk I had a player decide to butcher a pig as a gift for the lizards and lug the meat for days through the hot and humid swamp - players wondered about the perception checks they were rolling for until they were attacked by a troll and a gentle prod from the DM and an insight check as to why they were attacked reveled that they positively stunk of dead pig and had for days as the uncured meat got nice and warm. Was it situational? Yes. Did the rule make for a great session? Yes, yes it did.
WotC removing environmental factors is i believe, detrimental to the game
That's what situational advantage and disadvantage are for; the DM can still say "okay, you're trying to Stealth past guard dogs but didn't wash off after coming through the sewers, you all have Disadvantage on the roll". Environmental factors are something the DM is supposed to take into account while running an ability check.
Yes, however without a prompt key it will probably be missed by new DMs or left out as “it’s not in the rules”
In my opinion the change is not about making gameplay easier or making the statblock cleaner, it simply makes it easier to code for digital online (AI or videogame), otherwise there is no reason for it to be removed. The only caveat I will put on that is reducing physical print space, but as I do not have a print copy of the new rules I cannot check.
In my opinion the change is not about making gameplay easier or making the statblock cleaner, it simply makes it easier to code for digital online (AI or videogame), otherwise there is no reason for it to be removed. The only caveat I will put on that is reducing physical print space, but as I do not have a print copy of the new rules I cannot check.
Video games can trivially use rulesets that would make humans throw the whole thing out the window if they had to do it by hand, there's zero reason to make any of those changes for video games (there's things that are hard to do in video games... but stat blocks that require extra number crunching isn't one of them).
As a moon druid, I liked to cast Fog Cloud around enemies and then wild shape into a giant spider (which used to have Blind Sight) to attack with advantage (them Blinded; me not).
OR, I would wild shape into a beast with Keen Smell and/or Keen Hearing. Our process was that each keen sense (other than sight) provided a +5 to a perception check to see if I as a Direwolf or Brown Bear could find an enemy while blinded in the fog. If I could find them, then I could attack (with disadvantage due to being blinded). That was fun, because a wolf can clearly track down somebody more easily than a human can.
I think specific keen senses should be added back in. When blinded (by fog or whatever), they become much more important.
I’ve never once used any of these features, but it sucks that they’re gone. I like the flavor they provide, even if I never actually make use of them. On the player side, the druid in the party has used a feature like this once or twice.
As a moon druid, I liked to cast Fog Cloud around enemies and then wild shape into a giant spider (which used to have Blind Sight) to attack with advantage (them Blinded; me not).
OR, I would wild shape into a beast with Keen Smell and/or Keen Hearing. Our process was that each keen sense (other than sight) provided a +5 to a perception check to see if I as a Direwolf or Brown Bear could find an enemy while blinded in the fog. If I could find them, then I could attack (with disadvantage due to being blinded). That was fun, because a wolf can clearly track down somebody more easily than a human can.
I think specific keen senses should be added back in. When blinded (by fog or whatever), they become much more important.
That was pretty much exactly how I always ran it - as an additional locate invisible foe mechanic. Don't remember if that was a 3rd edition carry over on my part.
I mean, per 5e rules you still know the position of a heavily obscured creature unless it successfully hides and nothing says a perception checks can overcome being blinded by cover, so practically speaking Keen Senses makes no difference on your ability to find and attack an enemy in a fog cloud or similar conditions. And the general increase to perception is about even with the average gain from advantage, while also being more consistent.
Mechanically it's valuable. But also it added to the RP and flavor of a game. As a DM finding a hidden person by an NPC is easy, just a perception check. But when you do it with Keen Senses, it feels better, the guard sees nothing but the Dog Smells something so it barks. That feels natural and good. I can run that as RP, and will continue to run the RP of it. So I kind of hate it, and will manually add it back when needed.
Mechanically it's valuable. But also it added to the RP and flavor of a game. As a DM finding a hidden person by an NPC is easy, just a perception check. But when you do it with Keen Senses, it feels better, the guard sees nothing but the Dog Smells something so it barks. That feels natural and good. I can run that as RP, and will continue to run the RP of it. So I kind of hate it, and will manually add it back when needed.
Boosted Perception is the same core effect and is easier to apply.
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I noticed that they removed those special traits from the 5e’24 monsters’ stat blocks. The removal of the Keen Senses trait I understand since that would be easy enough to represent with expertise in Perception since it’s all the creature’s senses all the time. But Keen Hearing and Keen Smell are far more situational and therefore don’t apply all the time, so simply giving the creature expertise won’t do. Now, presumably they omitted those special traits on the premise that most DMs didn’t really use them, and players abused them. I guess DMs didn’t use them either because they didn’t want to or didn’t remember to, and some players will abuse anything they can which is why we can’t have nice things. As a DM I for one actually did use those traits though, so it’s fairly glaring that those creatures no longer have them, and as a player I did utilize them whenever my familiars had them, but I wouldn’t say I abused them (at least not by my reconning at any rate), so I feel it’s an overall net loss to the game.
What about you? What do you think? Did you use those traits as a DM? Did your players abuse them? I want to know your experiences and most of all, I want to know if you think they should still be there or be added back?
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Keen Smell was always a bit of a problem, because realistically for many animals it isn't just "can do something humans can do, only somewhat better", it's "can do something humans can't do at all".
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I don't think I've ever seen it come up at all as a player or DM (I have very limited experience in the latter though). I did notice that the 2024 Wolf has higher perception than its 2014 version (+5 vs +3) and Darkvision where the old one didn't. The Mastiff has the same changes, so I'm thinking they wrapped those special senses up into those normal bonuses to sort of unify the rules more.
I can appreciate that. I do have two questions though:
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Personally, they were one of those things which I found situational at best and often forgot in the heat of the moment. More importantly, I just don’t think they add much to the game - most animals with a keen sense of smell or such tend to have other keen senses as well, so a straight bonus to perception would be perfectly serviceable. I can also see specific senses causing problems when some rules lawyer tries to argue their character having just rubbed themselves in mud should be able to defeat an animal’s senses.
Notably, we also do not have the full Monster Manual at this time - it very well could be the case the MM has animals with heightened particularized senses, but they didn’t want players to have options where they try to argue with the DM to get a greater advantage than the spell was designed to provide.
All told, this is one of those changes I just can’t find myself caring about. If it was causing problems or just forgotten at other tables, I suppose makes sense to me they’d make something easier to remember and less prone to argument. Plus, it is D&D. If I as the DM want to add something like this in, nothing stops me, so no real skin off my nose if it is gone from official creatures.
The issue was that "advantage on checks" was a bad way of implementing the effect, it should be a sense with its own rules.
Yes we use smell and hearing in campaigns (but we also apply environmental factors like weather). I have had players decide to hunt and set traps for marauding beasts and not cover their scent. I as a player failed numerous animal handling checks and argued loudly and at length with my pack mule - sound carries
On a memorable trek to meet with a tribe of lizard folk I had a player decide to butcher a pig as a gift for the lizards and lug the meat for days through the hot and humid swamp - players wondered about the perception checks they were rolling for until they were attacked by a troll and a gentle prod from the DM and an insight check as to why they were attacked reveled that they positively stunk of dead pig and had for days as the uncured meat got nice and warm. Was it situational? Yes. Did the rule make for a great session? Yes, yes it did.
WotC removing environmental factors is i believe, detrimental to the game
We never really used it. I always thought it was kind of a strange thing. They never really clearly established how far you can see, and there were lots of arguments about how far away you can hear something like a V component in a spell. So how far away before smell kicks in as the main way to notice something? And, of course some smells and sounds are more noticeable than others.
They’d need to start getting pretty specific about ranges for different senses before it could be useful, or at least useful without arguments at the table, and that really not something they’ve worried about in this edition.
That's what situational advantage and disadvantage are for; the DM can still say "okay, you're trying to Stealth past guard dogs but didn't wash off after coming through the sewers, you all have Disadvantage on the roll". Environmental factors are something the DM is supposed to take into account while running an ability check.
I can't say those features have ever come up, either as a DM or in a campaign while I was playing.
I suppose that's why they got rid of them, if my experience is anything like the average person.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Actually, the distances for vision and hearing are on the DM’s Foldout Screen, Thrid or Fourth panel, 2/3rds or 3/4 way down.
Information that should have been printed in the 2024 DMG and PHB. Nope, Neither one. On a foldout dm screen almost no one knows about.
2024 rules, nothing in the PHB I presume? The 2024 DMG, I doubt it but you never know. After that, I would think it should be in some form of the core rules, but we shall wait and see.
Now as for the Keen Senses , you ether knew the player was going to abuse the ability constantly, or they have it but barely remember to use it. It’s another DM tool getting tossed for page space.
Yes, however without a prompt key it will probably be missed by new DMs or left out as “it’s not in the rules”
In my opinion the change is not about making gameplay easier or making the statblock cleaner, it simply makes it easier to code for digital online (AI or videogame), otherwise there is no reason for it to be removed. The only caveat I will put on that is reducing physical print space, but as I do not have a print copy of the new rules I cannot check.
Video games can trivially use rulesets that would make humans throw the whole thing out the window if they had to do it by hand, there's zero reason to make any of those changes for video games (there's things that are hard to do in video games... but stat blocks that require extra number crunching isn't one of them).
As a moon druid, I liked to cast Fog Cloud around enemies and then wild shape into a giant spider (which used to have Blind Sight) to attack with advantage (them Blinded; me not).
OR, I would wild shape into a beast with Keen Smell and/or Keen Hearing. Our process was that each keen sense (other than sight) provided a +5 to a perception check to see if I as a Direwolf or Brown Bear could find an enemy while blinded in the fog. If I could find them, then I could attack (with disadvantage due to being blinded). That was fun, because a wolf can clearly track down somebody more easily than a human can.
I think specific keen senses should be added back in. When blinded (by fog or whatever), they become much more important.
I’ve never once used any of these features, but it sucks that they’re gone. I like the flavor they provide, even if I never actually make use of them. On the player side, the druid in the party has used a feature like this once or twice.
That was pretty much exactly how I always ran it - as an additional locate invisible foe mechanic. Don't remember if that was a 3rd edition carry over on my part.
I mean, per 5e rules you still know the position of a heavily obscured creature unless it successfully hides and nothing says a perception checks can overcome being blinded by cover, so practically speaking Keen Senses makes no difference on your ability to find and attack an enemy in a fog cloud or similar conditions. And the general increase to perception is about even with the average gain from advantage, while also being more consistent.
Mechanically it's valuable. But also it added to the RP and flavor of a game. As a DM finding a hidden person by an NPC is easy, just a perception check. But when you do it with Keen Senses, it feels better, the guard sees nothing but the Dog Smells something so it barks. That feels natural and good. I can run that as RP, and will continue to run the RP of it. So I kind of hate it, and will manually add it back when needed.
Boosted Perception is the same core effect and is easier to apply.