Does the witch's child-scent hex detect fetuses, even if the mother isn't obviously pregnant?
Animal eggs, absolutely. They're immature animals, after all. Magical beasts and dragons, you're out of luck.
I would say no, because the fetus doesn't have a separate scent. The same as you would not be able to track down someone that had had scrambled eggs for breakfast.
I would say no, because the fetus doesn't have a separate scent. The same as you would not be able to track down someone that had had scrambled eggs for breakfast.
Eggs (of the sort that most people eat) do not work that way.
Well, dogs can tell when a woman is pregnant, because they can detect the hormonal change to her scent.
But the hex isn't called the "pregnancy test hex," so... nevermind.
Well, dogs can tell when a woman is pregnant, because they can detect the hormonal change to her scent.
But the hex isn't called the "pregnancy test hex," so... nevermind.
Honestly it's that kind of fluff that makes really like the idea of it working that way.
I can't think of any mechanical reason for it to work... but to have some creepy witch type walk up to a woman and grin maliciously sounds like so much FUN!!!
Technically, it's not a child until it's born. But in a more common sense way, I think we can agree you can't smell a fetus inside of a pregnant woman. I've never been able to, anyway. A pregnant woman just smells pregnant. :) The ability to detect pregnancy is a separate application of scent. Dogs do pretty well at it.
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But in a more common sense way, I think we can agree you can't smell a fetus inside of a pregnant woman. I've never been able to, anyway.
So how long have you been casting spells?
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I like the idea of a witch going up to a pregnant woman in her first/second trimester (before its apparent) and saying,
"You're with child, aren't you dear?"
Baba Yaga has child scent and it seems like something that Dear Grandmother would say, at least in my head it feels right.
For eggs and stuff, I'd say that the egg would have to be fertilized first.
I like the idea of a witch going up to a pregnant woman in her first/second trimester (before its apparent) and saying,
"You're with child, aren't you dear?"
Baba Yaga has child scent and it seems like something that Dear Grandmother would say, at least in my head it feels right.
For eggs and stuff, I'd say that the egg would have to be fertilized first.
I would second this, if only for how creepy it would be. And let us be honest here: it is not going to be a PC that uses this hex. Far too circumstantial for anyone to take it outside of a joke. This is a hex made purely for GMs to accomplish creepy, creepy things due to their prior knowledge of other available NPCs (although, it would be fantastic for a boss in a campaign where all the PCs were children)
So why not let them have this creepy tool? A GM could find a way to stick regular scent on the witch anyway (a wand of the bloodhound spell, which is a first level ranger spell, has a duration of hours/level for example), so it is not that unusual.
Admittedly, I'd probably wait until like, the second trimester, when you start to see the development of baby-ly bits. But that is just personal preference.
It does have kind of a nice creepy old lady vibe doesn't it? Also fun if you inverted it to be a creepy old dude instead. You could probably build a sort of plot point around it as well to raise certain tensions or to create an air of mystery around something.
For example, if you have a monster with some sort of principles who happens to also be a witch with this hex, maybe it spares a single person from its wholesale slaughter with no obvious reason why (but in reality it has compunctions against killing children/babies and passes over the pregnant woman).
Admittedly, I'd probably wait until like, the second trimester, when you start to see the development of baby-ly bits. But that is just personal preference.
For me, I think the knowing before there are any signs makes it seem more bizarre/mystical and adds to the creepy factor. Of course, I've seen a similar trope emerge in a few things over the years where some magical person seems to innately know someone is going to have a kid before anyone else does and for no apparent reason, so the idea might be further nudged by those experiences.
In either case it could be pretty fun. It could also be an interesting thing if one of the PCs or favored NPCs are involved, but such a thing isn't for most campaigns (but could be quite fun if you have a campaign with a lot of downtime and fast-forwarding, or as an epic multi-generational campaign).
Brainstorms brewing...
I agree with some of the others. Strictly RAW, probably not - waterproof amniotic sac, no smells getting out. However, child-scent is so clearly intended as 'creepy', that the extension of the creepiness to supernaturally detecting a 'pre-child' seems to fit really well.
You'll never get an official answer to this, I wager, since it dives head first into a huge religious mess. As Agrisomnia indicated, just above.
Wow, far less flame bait in the thread than expected.
By RAW, I don't believe it would work on fetuses. That said as a GM, I also love the creepy vibe Alexander Augunas proposes, so I might let it work in that circumstance.
You'll never get an official answer to this, I wager, since it dives head first into a huge religious mess. As Agrisomnia indicated, just above.
Not necessarily. It's really about when that special magical scent springs up. It may before there's a soul involved. It might just be a matter of freshness. :P
Aside from the obviously Evil uses, it would allow the hex to compliment the witch as a Hedge Witch Doctor of sorts. A medicine man who could "smell" when a woman was pregnant in a culture without much readily available technology to determine as such would be extremely valuable to the culture.
The question was about children, not life. Or would you exclude undead from having children?*carefully arranges tinder, twigs, sawdust and douses it with gasoline*
Life begins at conception. Discuss.
*stands back*
Dhampir are an interesting thing because it suggests that undeath doesn't bar the organism from reproducing. In fact, some setting lore suggest that certain types of undead are perfectly capable of reproduction.
For example, in Vampire Hunter D (the old 80s anime film, I've never read the novels) it's heavily implied that vampires can breed with other vampires, and some vampires are rather snobbish about it as they worry about things like lineage, viewing themselves as nobles, humans as common peasants, and some of them get rather involved in whether or not you're a pure-blood vampire or a bastard between a vampire and someone of humble birth.
There's a certain amount of vagueness to the ability regardless. There is no hardset rule as to when a certain species stops being in the child category unless we're referencing the adulthood chart for the core races in the additional rules section of the Core Rulebook, but that still leaves a lot of gray areas, especially when it comes to animals, and the adulthood numbers are fairly arbitrary from the perspective that there's no reason given for setting those numbers specifically (it doesn't seem biological in definition as reproductive maturity sets in earlier than 15 years in humans).
Aside from the obviously Evil uses, it would allow the hex to compliment the witch as a Hedge Witch Doctor of sorts. A medicine man who could "smell" when a woman was pregnant in a culture without much readily available technology to determine as such would be extremely valuable to the culture.
True that. But a bigger can of worms is probably the remove disease debacle. Remove disease also kills parasites from the host system.
A parasite is a separate living organism (no matter how complex) that attaches itself to the host and draws nurishment and such from its body.
Now anyone who's paid attention in biology may immediate notice that remove disease may have some unwanted implications...
The question was about children, not life. Or would you exclude undead from having children?*carefully arranges tinder, twigs, sawdust and douses it with gasoline*
Life begins at conception. Discuss.
*stands back*
Well, the hex says it works on humanoids and animals, not undead. I assume they're referring to the types and not just things that have a human-like shape.
In any event, this raises an interesting question:
If a Paladin/Witch gestalt character uses Child Scent on an Undead Baby, does the Paladin fall?
Depends. How clumsy is the Paladin? Because between your post and my watching Sailor Moon today, I want to make a klutzy hero now.
I would say no, Childscent wouldn't detect a pregnant woman.
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i'd agree, no, that's not something childscent could do.
It's not, however, totally out of the realm of possibility of something a creepy old wizard/witch could do. There's a 3p spell Detect Pregnancy that is perfect for this.
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Aside from the obviously Evil uses, it would allow the hex to compliment the witch as a Hedge Witch Doctor of sorts. A medicine man who could "smell" when a woman was pregnant in a culture without much readily available technology to determine as such would be extremely valuable to the culture.True that. But a bigger can of worms is probably the remove disease debacle. Remove disease also kills parasites from the host system.
A parasite is a separate living organism (no matter how complex) that attaches itself to the host and draws nurishment and such from its body.
Now anyone who's paid attention in biology may immediate notice that remove disease may have some unwanted implications...
I believe the definition for parasite, as found in biology textbooks, is that it is of a different species than the host :P
So, don't trust the informal definition, a unborn child is by definition NOT a parasite, at least according to biology community.
But is a half-elven foetus a different species compared to the human mother?
Biologically, a species is a group capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. Technically, this means that most sapient races in Pathfinder are indeed races, as they would appear to be highly divergent subsets of the same species.
Remove disease works from the benefit to the target of the spell, and so not your own intestinal flora nor a fetus are a "disease" (certain oddities of medical billing and the pathologizing of human birth aside).
In that case:
“Half-dragon” is an inherited or acquired template that can be added to any living, corporeal creature (referred to hereafter as the base creature).Does that mean all living, corporeal creatures are the same species?
That's broadly what I mean, yes, although the template does note that it's more usually the product of a wizard experimenting with dragon bits and a random creature than a hormonal adolescent dragon and a random creature.
In practice, you'd probably only get away with claiming that the PC races and a few humanoid monsters are the same species.
There are books about the lore of elves...in one if I reneged correctly it states that elves, orcs, humans, and the like were actually all one species to begin with...and then eventually became separate...but that explains why they can interbreed
But that's just one book on the subject out of many
True that. But a bigger can of worms is probably the remove disease debacle. Remove disease also kills parasites from the host system.
A parasite is a separate living organism (no matter how complex) that attaches itself to the host and draws nurishment and such from its body.
Now anyone who's paid attention in biology may immediate notice that remove disease may have some unwanted implications...
Personally, I think it depends upon the "feel" you're going for. In a high-magic world, the fact that healing magic *could* potentially kill an unborn child is a plausible reason as to why many women might die in childbirth despite how readily available healing magic is.
I'd totally allow childscent to detect pregnancy, for the creepiness factor alone.
Whether I'd allow remove disease to terminate a pregnancy would depend on the deity granting the spell. Most wouldn't. A small handful would.
I would only allow remove disease to terminate the pregnancy if the pregnancy was harming the mother and she would have to be willing or unconscious.
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Technically, it's not a child until it's born.
That kind of claim borders on political, religious, scientific, and moral grounds that are not the purpose of this site.
Please be careful with what you post here, folks.
It would seem that RAW is referring to born, not unborn. So it would not include any "in utero" creature. Mechanically, this is probably because the scent of such a creature is being masked by the mother's own scent...which the ability specifically says it cannot detect.
Although allowing this to detect pregnant women would certainly be a creepy use for it. ;)