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By Alec Austin
By Kyle Hunter

Along with sight and sound, the sense of smell is one of the primary ways characters experience the world. While most PCs lack the scent ability, this does not mean you should ignore a powerful tool for characterizing a city, neighborhood, or NPC.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

As they approach a city, characters often smell it before they get a clear look at it. The air around a seaside city is filled with the briny scent of the ocean, while a desert city smells of baked stone and sand. A fishing village built on mudflats may well reek of fish guts and rotting vegetation, while a town’s tannery stinks of pollution and chemicals from miles away. A city’s level of sanitation, the habits of its people, and its environs all influence what the PCs’ first whiff of air tells them about it; for example, a bloody and barbarous goblin city built atop a windy bluff is less likely to reek of filth and old blood than one built in the depths of a stifling cavern.

PUBLIC SANITATION

Most medieval European cities had streets that were little better than open sewers, as their citizens emptied their chamberpots out of their windows. In contrast, many Roman cities had aqueducts, sewers, and running water. The presence of magic in the D&D game allows for an even wider array of public sanitation options. A city whose streets are swept by skeletons and zombies may smell faintly of decay and rotting flesh, while one that feeds its rubbish to a captive fire elemental may well choke on its own smoke when the wind blows the wrong way.

A city’s size is another major influence on how polluted its atmosphere becomes. While a hamlet of people burning coal and firewood may produce only a little smoke, the chimneys of a city of thousands belch forth clouds of smoke and ashes. A metropolis (like London in the 19th century) may produce so much smoke that its sky becomes permanently overcast and impenetrable clouds of fog and soot constantly descend upon it. These problems may be alleviated through the widespread use of household magic or air elementals summoned to help keep the smoke at bay.

INDUSTRY

A city’s industries have a dramatic effect on its smell. While tanneries and dyeing vats stink of chemicals, slaughterhouses reek of blood, and forges and foundries smell of sparks, smoke, and heated metal, a magical world has many other industries which produce their own scents. Alchemical laboratories and wizard’s workshops could smell of ozone, acid, or anything imaginable, though unless their owner is distilling liquid sunlight or something similar, their mix of exotic scents is unlikely to be very pleasant. Just as mundane breweries infuse their surroundings with the scent of alcohol and fermenting grain, magical distilleries might well smell like their product’s eventual flavor. A necropolis that specializes in mummification might smell of exotic spices, preservatives, and camphor oil, while one that focuses on raising armies of mindless undead is more likely to smell of freshly turned earth, decaying flesh, and moldering bones.

PEOPLE

The personal sanitation of a city’s people affects its smell as thoroughly as any public sanitation measures it may have in place. For instance, a crowd of sweaty, unwashed goblins can instantly be distinguished from more fastidious people such as elves, who wash every day, or salamanders, whose personal fire burns away bodily filth. Barring extreme cases such as troglodytes, characters can gather a substantial amount of information from how the groups or individuals they encounter smell. A half-orc whose armor and weapons reek of rotting blood sends quite a different message from the aristocrat who douses himself in cologne and perfume as part of his daily toilette.

Generally, the wealthier a character is, the more resources he expends to make himself smell better. While this means baths, deodorant, and perfume in most human cities, different cultures might well have different standards. The respect that dwarves have for smiths and craftsmen might result in “perfumes” that make their wearer smell as if they had just spent several hours working with hot metal, while the devils of the Nine Hells might seek to intensify smells like brimstone or offal.

INTERIORS

Of course, any building is likely to smell of the material used to construct it. While this is obvious in the case of wood and stone buildings, more exotic building materials produce exotic smells. A tower lined in flesh, for instance, might stink of pus and other unpleasant fluids, while one made of iron is likely to smell of rust or freshly scoured metal.

Just as a character’s social class can often be discerned by how she smells, the quality of a business or other establishment may be indicated by the nature of its scent. A stinking, muddy riverside tavern is unlikely to compare to an establishment smelling of baking bread and freshly cut flowers. Which scents indicate quality may vary. The cleanliness of a smith’s forge is unlikely to correlate with the quality of his wares, and the high priest of a church filled with valuable incense may care more for his own status than the well being of the faithful.

PLAYER CHARACTERS

Characters who stumble into town after a long journey or a battle are unlikely to smell like roses, and this could easily bias their perceptions. After all, if you stink of orc guts, you eventually become accustomed to the scent. Similarly, characters who insist on contacting NPCs without washing or changing their attire might well receive a chilly reception (suffering up to a –10 circumstance penalty to Diplomacy and appropriate Bluff checks), and may need to turn to perfume or magic to cover the lingering scents of battle, especially if they have no time to bathe.

PERFUMES AND DEODORANT

Perfumes are available in a wide variety of scents, from the cheapest oils meant to cover even less pleasant smells, to the delicate and complex scents favored at the royal court. Cheap perfume replaces a smelly character’s social penalties with a flat –1 penalty on Diplomacy and Bluff checks. More expensive and subtle perfumes negate these penalties completely or grant a bonus in interactions with characters that find them appealing. Cheap perfume grants a +10 circumstance bonus on any attempt made to track the wearer by scent, while other types of perfume grant a +4 circumstance bonus.

Alchemical deodorant helps destroy a character’s scent, negating any scent-based social penalties a character suffers. Attempts to track the character via scent suffer a –4 penalty. Each dose of perfume or deodorant lasts for 24 hours.

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