Dwarves

Dwarves have superior hearing. Their ears can detect higher and lower frequencies than can humans, and at much lower volumes. Their ears have multiple chambers with valves and hair that adjust instantly to loud noises or open to detect faint ones. This deteriorates with age, making very old dwarves rather cranky and sensitive to noise. They often prefer to be left alone.

“Where’s grandfather?”

“Leave him alone. He’s listening to stone.”

They can also see well in darkness, having good range into the infrared.

Their taste buds are not sensitive. They eat without savoring, but appreciate food that varies in temperature. Hot food and cold drink is their idea of a feast. The details don’t matter.

Their touch is closely tied to vision and hearing. All three are used when they “listen to the stone.” It is what leads the ignorant to believe dwarves can see into mountains, but it’s true they use their abilities to guide them in both mining and building.

On the other hand, their sense of smell is merely human ordinary.

Elves

Elves are extended in all senses. Their True Eye detects phlogiston naturally and is widely regarded as a sixth sense. With training and experience this can become highly sensitive.

Hearing is better than human, not so good as dwarves, but they have the ability to be selective. They can hear a single voice in a crowd. This also improves with practice, to where they can isolate two or more voices, letting them eavesdrop on conversations. They are valued as spies for this.

Elvish taste is sophisticated. There isn’t any edible that disgusts them and they enjoy most everything. Epicures will even eat poison, if they have an antidote handy, just to experience the taste. People will travel weeks to view a rare sight, they say, so why not to experience a rare taste?

The answer to this is that all sensory memories carry the same weight for elves. With humans, sensory memory is mainly about sight, followed by smell and sound. With elves, all sensory memories can resonate, and they don’t even need to have the sense occur again, they way it does with smell for a human. They can recall it.

Touch is highly developed and controllable. They can be more or less sensitive at will. With their True Eye open, they can “feel” magic presence.

Similarly with odors. By keeping their True Eye closed and exerting a specific kind of will, they could walk through a field of three-day corpses without difficulty.

Finally, there is elvish vision. As wide-ranging as dwarves, but with the addition of being able to “see” magic (phlogiston), elvish vision has become legendary. The stories about their “Evil Eye” have long since been proved false, but some elves can do magic that certainly appears to reach out and affect their target. Add normal superstition and it becomes easy for some to believe in elvish curses of one kind or another.

Other Peoples

Gnomes are much like dwarves, but their touch is heightened while their hearing is less. Their senses go to wood rather than to stone.

Orcs see better than humans. Touch is less (something that is at the base of the “stone skin” myth). Vegetable matter is tasteless to orcs, but they are gourmets of meat.

Trolls see less well (a narrower range), hear better (especially at bass tones), and have a curiously well-developed sense of smell, considering how other peoples complain of trollic stink. “You smell like a troll!”

Other peoples have variations on all this, but nothing interesting, save to specialists.