[Hraesvelg]

I thought potent meant smelly...or something associated with smells x.x

Hmm, I don't know if I've ever heard it used in that manner. Potency is a measure of strength.

Princeton's Wordnet defines it as follows:

# having great influence
# having or wielding force or authority; "providing the ground soldier with increasingly potent weapons"
# having a strong physiological or chemical effect; "a potent toxin"; "potent liquor"; "a potent cup of tea", "a stiff drink"
# (of a male) capable of copulation

And wiki also gives:

In the field of pharmacology, potency is a measure of drug activity expressed in terms of the amount required to produce an effect of given intensity.