How Does Scent Work in Smoke?

[Cloudyshine]

Recently in a campaign I fought someone with the scent ability, and using the Eversmoking Bottle I hid in a cloud of smoke. The DM however ruled that he could smell my scent, even though we were both in thick smoke.

Let's say he didn't hold his breath and inhaled smoke to be able to smell, making the fort save not to end up coughing and choking. How would he be able to smell me through the smoke? Wouldn't the smoke overwhelm my scent? Are there any rules for this?

And just as a little side-note, if you hold your breah in the smoke, can you cast spells with verbal components, or must you breath and succeed on the fort save to do that?

[tchrman35]

Just write it down and save it. What's good for the goose...

If I were to make a ruling, I would say that smoke foiled scent, and I might try to impose some kind of penalty for a time. (Sickened for a d4 rounds for actively trying to use scent in a smoky area perhaps.)

I'm not sure there's rules text for it either way, though, so it's in the realm of GM fiat. Which means she just needs to be consistent.

[Tarik Blackhands]

The bottle is ultimately a GM call since there's three stances you can logically take with the item.

One: Item does what it says and nothing more. This means the bottle emits smoke that blocks vision. No scent blocking, no coughing, just the text on the item.

Two: Smoke follows the heavy smoke environmental rules. That's where the fort saves and hacking can come in

Three: Smoke follows pyrotechnics rules since that's listed as a spell component in the bottle.

In any case, smoke doesn't look like it blocks scent and interpretation 1 of the bottle is probably the most logical stance to take in general if you ask me.

[jbadams]

I would have called for a Perception test, and the Perception DC would be increased due to the smoke, at your GM's discretion. The chart lists +2 for unfavorable conditions or +5 for terrible conditions (such as an overpowering stench).

[Yorien]

Depending on GM ruling, the smoke of the bottle can perfectly be odorless, so a creature with scent could perfecly track a target through it, specially if that creature already has recognized the scent she wants to track.

Same as police dogs, it mostly depends on how strong the creature's scent sense is. A trained dog can perfectly recognize a specific scent like drugs hidden in a suitcase, even if someone tries to conceal that specific scent by adding others.

If the bottle smoke is odorless, then your GM can perfectly declare the creature starts tracking by scent (namely, you do not track someone only by sight, you also support yourself with other senses to help you. You lose sight for a moment but hear a branch snapping, or footsteps...; a creature with scent may keep your secific odor as part of it's tracking measures, and switch to scent as the main tracking method when it's clearly better than vision).

If the bottle is not odorless, then I'd probably roll a perception check, DC depending on how powerful the smoke stench is.

[Claxon]

There are no rules that say scent is negated by the effect of the ever smoking bottle. There are some spells (and I think items) which do specifically target scent though.

Such as Negate Aroma.

[Scott Wilhelm]

I seem to recall that creatures with Scent may be more vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks like Stinking Cloud maybe, but I do not recall any specific rule that Scent = vulnerability. And I believe there is no rule that says that the Eversmoking Bottle interferes with the Scent Ability. I myself have a Pathfinder Society Character who has Scent, Blindfigthing, and an Eversmoking Bottle. The problems I ran into with that character is that few PFS Players take countermeasures against going Blind, and so it drew resentment whenever I used the ability and the other PCs got caught in it. There was no problem with using Scent in the cloud produced by an Eversmoking Bottle.

For a verisimilitude argument, I'd say that an Eversmoking Bottle doesn't produce natural wood smoke or even cigarette smoke. It makes magic smoke, and maybe magic smoke is not as irritating to the lungs.