Beauty in D&D

[Templetroll]

Would you ever allow a chainmail bikini in your game?

Who's the prettiest PC in the party?

Okay, way back when (79-81), (see my sig, it was that GM) I had an evil dwarf thief named Iceheart and we found a trapped box. We survived the blast of ice it dished out and another PC took the ring inside. He was going to toss the box. My dwarf grabbed it. (DM said, "It's just a trapped box." I replied, "I know, but it's a really cool trapped box and it has a devil's signature on it!)

Back in town, as part of his getting re-equipped Iceheart decided to buy a couple of slaves so he could test the box without any great loss. (honest, there will be a bikini in this story) A farmer is willing to sell two of his daughters, a 15 year old who looked like Diane Lane and an 11 year old that looked like Kristy McNichol. The farmer said, "Marry the eldest and you can have her half-price." Dwarf said "sure, family pays for the preacher." Done deal.

We head out, the girls each get a dagger, and leather armor. The party gets attacked by something we called Serten's Aerial Anti-Bodies (living saran wrap, smothered you and if attacked in melee half the damage went through) Dwarf is wrapped up, the eldest gets the box and opens it killing three antibodies and saving the party. She and her sister made their save big time.

Dwarf kinda appreciates it but now is stuck with two mouths to feed; they finally got names, Rowena and Godiva. He and the assassin in the group decide to train the girls, since they are stuck with them. The dwarf and assassin piss off some of the other party members and they kick them (thief, assassin, two slave girls) out of the group in the middle of the wilderness. They decide to follow at a distance so they can get to the dungeon safely; plan was anything attacks they run to the group and lead whatever it is for them to fight.

The party gets to dungeon, find a mummy and two characters run in fear, right into our lil group. The dwarf and assassin decide to try and kill these guys, do badly and die. The rest of the party arrive, see the 'good' guy about to kill the slave girls and stop him. Rowena demands that her husband's murderer be arrested and she get all of Iceheart's stuff, since she is the grieving widow. The guy who killed him runs off, never to adventure with that bunch again. The group gave her all the dwarf's stuff EXCEPT the ice box. they said that was too dangerous. (the players didn't trust me with that box )

We get in the dungeon, party sees ogres ahead. They tell the girls to wait there in the corridor to be safe. They move up the corridor and engage. The girls see more ogres coming down the corridor behind the party. One comes towards them and the eldest takes out a necklace the dwarf had - smiles her prettiest (15 year old Diane Lane smile offering a jeweled necklace...) The Ogre is about to reach for it as the other move past to attack the party from behind.

The girl smiles, tilts her head to the side cutely holding the necklace open and gestures she will put it on him! He agrees, and is smiling... as it begins to tighten around his throat! (Necklace of Strangulation, party knew it and didn't think that was too dangerous!?!) Ogre dies, relatively quietly.

the girls sneak up behind ogres busily beating on party members and stab them both from behind. The DM used a hit location and both were in the abdomen and I rolleda 19 and a 20 which was automatic double damage in those days! hit location doubled that, the DM told me to roll up stats to see if they might have benefited from the training of the Dwarf and assassin, they did and two ogres dropped!

The party kicked butt after that, and won the fight. They handed the icebox back to Rowena, (since I had actual characters to play now), they gave a sword that was black and had smoke comoing off it to the 11 year old since the girls did so great. (no one wanted the black sword because it seemed bad. it was an frostbrand. )

Anyway, a few years pass game time and the younger girl, Godiva, gets adopted by the Elven King ( she had pluses on charisma when dealing with elves) and is about to get married to her favorite guy, a human farmer. She gives the black sword, which we found out had flight twice a day, to her older sister. The Elven King forces Rowena to become LG instead of LE so she has to be an assassin 7 F1. Now, she starts to have dreams about this strange city... and the the sword starts to talk to her! (I had a tendancy to roll 1s and the sword would be tossed, she would fall to the ground, ouch! soon enough she was able to do that "hold out hand and sword flies to it" That helped.)

Turns out she is the Eternal Champion of Law and this is The Sword of Law. (this was not a sane campaign but this was not unbalanced in relation to the other characters!) She started to learn how to be the Champion, another party member, Vaklev Poluchek, the Bouncing Czech, got to be the Champion of Chaos with the Ring of Gaxx. (see? very balanced... ) He was in love with her.

She married this bard we met in the oriental land; he turned out to be the Shogun in disguise. (this orient was based on the Mikado) They had a kid, the marriage broke up since she could not be at home; the Champion of Chaos was there to fight by her side.

Then the evil gods raped her to get Champions for a different Prime Material plane! to make up for it they let her see them whenever she wanted to and have an effect on their upbringing; they usually didn't do that for those they used as breeders. (She had a thing about trying to kill gods from then on...) Vaklev was there to support her in this bad time.

The gods also gave her a bikini. (finally! This was Diane Lane in early 20s in that bikini; 14 charisma, this character never had a steller personality because she was gorgeous. The gods stopped her aging at that point also.)

She got married to a wizard, named Avatar; they honeymooned on the Demonweb Pit, he died, soul destroyed. The Champion of Chaos was there to keep the thing from destroying Rowena's soul and then to console her. After they got back to the Prime Material she looked at him, "sigh Oh, okay." and they got married.

From then on when she called out her full name, Lady Rowena Iceheart Avatar Poluchek, the Eternal Champion of Law! a lightning bolt would crash down and blast whatever she wore so that she could fight in the black bikini with the black sword.

The Champions had a kid, she became a Time Lord. Rowena eventually had her spirit go to Tanelorn. Her husband and kids could visit her there. She was F 16/A 7 by then. Her shield emblem was a silver heart with icicles hangind from the bottom of it on a black shield.

 

[RangerWickett]

Wow

 

[Algolei]

Beauty has no place at my D&D table.

 

[Algolei]

Haw haw haw, I crack myself up....

 

[Gez]

Beauty is left to the player to choose for his/her PC, and to the DM to choose for all NPCs.

When non-described, it's assumed to be average -- neither unattractive nor really attractive.

Beside, beauty is in the eye of the beholder (but assuredly not anywhere in the rest of the eye-tyrant's body, tee-hee). Elves are all about tall, thin, scornful, anorexic supermodels with long flowing hair, while dwarves are all about petite, joyful, buxom barmaids with freckles and curly hair. Elves find the dwarven ideal of beauty to be vulgar and uncouth, dwarves find the elven ideal of beauty boring, rude, and frigid.
Humans find anything they can sleep with beautiful, as long as they have a good booze supply. That's why you have half-orcs, half-giants, half-ogres, half-trolls, half-fiends, half-hobgoblins, half-minotaurs, half-chaos beasts, and half-gelatinous cubes. OK, I'm maybe a bit over the top there. But honestly, what's with all the half-thing and thingblooded races? Why is (nearly) always the other half human?

 

[Al]

Given that Charisma clearly has at least some correlation to Appearance, but is not explicitly tied to it, I make Appearance equal 3d6 + Cha mod. Thus, this allows ugly orators (Cha 16, App 6) and vacuous and uninteresting models (Cha 6, App 16).

 

[Ottergame]

Fantasy art almost always has beautiful people, especially beautiful women. Monsters are fierce, men are mighty, and women are stunning. Sure, a lot of us try to get away from these rather trite stereotypes of fantasy, but from time to time it's fun to embrace the cliches and see how silly we can be without becoming offensive.

In my fantasy setting, I have beauty pageants. "Adventurers" as a group are those people who are professionally employed by governments, merchants, nobles, or warlords for the purposes of small-group missions of varying degrees of combat risk. More commonly, adventurers are referred to as "Persons of uncanny combat prowess."

For mercenary bands and farming villages who need help, any old hero will do, as long as he's tough. But for those who are in the public spotlight, only the most appealing heroes will work, and unattractive adventurers are as good as unemployed.

So nobles sometimes host adventuring beauty pageants, to see who is the most attractive while being the most skilled. Usually an adventuring party will include one handsome guy who's okay with a sword, one beautiful woman who's good at healing, and then two other people who aren't ugly, but are bad-asses. The spokesperson of the group is usually the guy, and preferably the guy and the woman fall in love, so you can entertain the common folk with stories of romance in addition to tales of epic combat against monsters from tombs that were meant to remain hidden for eternity.

People who don't know any better usually assume that beautiful people are more important (read: higher level), and that the normal-looking folks are henchmen, nevermind the fact that they're bedecked in spiked fullplate.

How do you handle beauty in your games? Do you just tie it to charisma? Do you ignore it? Do you play to the classic images of gorgeous sorceresses and muscle-bound barbarians? Would you ever allow a chainmail bikini in your game?

Who's the prettiest PC in the party?

That has to be the longest commercial for a product I've seen here yet.

 

[Sammael]

That has to be the longest commercial for a product I've seen here yet.

I am inclined to agree.

 

[The Shaman]

Beauty is independent variable when I GM - a player can make their character as smokin' hawt or coyote ugly as they like, but it's Charisma that closes the deal at last call.

Most of my own characters are pretty plain - I had one character that I considered to be strikingly handsome, but for the most part they wouldn't stand out in a crowd.

 

[Gez]

A high Charisma only makes sure your beauty is noticed, IMO.