Honestly, having smell be a special sense (non-targeting, like tremorsense) would probably handle that case better than advantages on smell tests, and it was never clear when to apply advantage on vision/hearing, since an awful lot of tests are both.
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.
Wrong. It increases all the senses, some creatures should have no boost on visual perception, only on smell or hearing. Classic example, toss a yellow ball at a dog but it lands in the tall grass in front of the dog, and watch it fail to find the yellow ball in the green grass. Pure comedy gold.
Sometimes the RP of a mechanic is the increased chance of failure due to situations. Giving a flat +2 or +3 to perception ruins the flavor and RP, if you know it's dogs, and you can change your smells that should be an option. Remember D&D is not a combat simulator, it's an RPG.
Okay, and how often in play have you had guard dogs rolling for perception in a circumstance where they wouldn’t be using their ears and noses?
Okay, and how often in play have you had guard dogs rolling for perception in a circumstance where they wouldn’t be using their ears and noses?
As a DM, I allow players to be creative, and this has happened more than once. Using strong smells and distracting noise are things you can easily do in D&D, and smart players should use these when sneaking into a castile or dungeon. (In the most recent case, which was 2 years ago the players were stealing something from a Castile and ran a full distraction event on the Guards and their dogs. The players pulled it off masterfully btw. )
Okay, and how often in play have you had guard dogs rolling for perception in a circumstance where they wouldn’t be using their ears and noses?
As a DM, I allow players to be creative, and this has happened more than once. Using strong smells and distracting noise are things you can easily do in D&D, and smart players should use these when sneaking into a castile or dungeon. (In the most recent case, which was 2 years ago the players were stealing something from a Castile and ran a full distraction event on the Guards and their dogs. The players pulled it off masterfully btw. )
I'm not following your point at all here. All that seems likely to do in 5e is cause disadvantage, the same as it would now, with approximately the same net effect. And "more than once" is not the same as "frequently"- the vast majority of the time an NPC is making a Perception check, it's going to be because they're searching for one or more PCs, at which point all applicable senses will be employed. Ergo, rather than make the bonus a separate effect the DM needs to remember to apply, it's more efficient to just boost Perception.
I am agnostic to how they have historically applied mechanics to represent superior sense of smell or hearing as they have historically done so poorly. I just liked it when you were reminded in the stat block to factor in that a particular creature had superior senses. Agree the most common application is scenarios where all senses are relevant but the small Perception bonus is a paltry representation of animal sensory superiority over humans.
In general this change is moving in the wrong direction as the Expertise bonus given low level Beasts (+2 in all cases I've seen so far) is significantly inferior to the static +5 formerly applied to Passive Perception representing advantage. You could argue that this ability was moved from situationally applicable to generally applicable but as noted above - in almost all of the most common scenarios these abilities would be applicable.
Pragmatically all senses should work like Vision - i.e. creatures are obvious to you unless otherwise obscured from that specific sense. A simplification would be "Keen Smell/Hearing - You are aware of and cannot be surprised by creatures you can smell/hear. Likewise, you do not suffer any of the effects of visual obscurement if you can smell/hear a target."
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Honestly, having smell be a special sense (non-targeting, like tremorsense) would probably handle that case better than advantages on smell tests, and it was never clear when to apply advantage on vision/hearing, since an awful lot of tests are both.
Okay, and how often in play have you had guard dogs rolling for perception in a circumstance where they wouldn’t be using their ears and noses?
As a DM, I allow players to be creative, and this has happened more than once. Using strong smells and distracting noise are things you can easily do in D&D, and smart players should use these when sneaking into a castile or dungeon. (In the most recent case, which was 2 years ago the players were stealing something from a Castile and ran a full distraction event on the Guards and their dogs. The players pulled it off masterfully btw. )
I'm not following your point at all here. All that seems likely to do in 5e is cause disadvantage, the same as it would now, with approximately the same net effect. And "more than once" is not the same as "frequently"- the vast majority of the time an NPC is making a Perception check, it's going to be because they're searching for one or more PCs, at which point all applicable senses will be employed. Ergo, rather than make the bonus a separate effect the DM needs to remember to apply, it's more efficient to just boost Perception.
I am agnostic to how they have historically applied mechanics to represent superior sense of smell or hearing as they have historically done so poorly. I just liked it when you were reminded in the stat block to factor in that a particular creature had superior senses. Agree the most common application is scenarios where all senses are relevant but the small Perception bonus is a paltry representation of animal sensory superiority over humans.
In general this change is moving in the wrong direction as the Expertise bonus given low level Beasts (+2 in all cases I've seen so far) is significantly inferior to the static +5 formerly applied to Passive Perception representing advantage. You could argue that this ability was moved from situationally applicable to generally applicable but as noted above - in almost all of the most common scenarios these abilities would be applicable.
Pragmatically all senses should work like Vision - i.e. creatures are obvious to you unless otherwise obscured from that specific sense. A simplification would be "Keen Smell/Hearing - You are aware of and cannot be surprised by creatures you can smell/hear. Likewise, you do not suffer any of the effects of visual obscurement if you can smell/hear a target."