D&D (2024) Change in Charisma Description

[Scott Christian]

So everyone can misquote everything I have said, here you go:

• I think charisma should only be based on looks.
• I think charisma should have a one word definition - beauty.
• I think charisma can only be tied to pretty, and only in human modern-day standards.
• (Of course, all of this is sarcasm.)

You can use these as quotes to constantly and purposefully misstate what I have said. It's ridiculous, just like the DM argument. I have repeatedly espoused it be part (part, not all) of the definition. How everyone can read it as anything other than that is incomprehensible to me.

I appreciate people who don't want it in the definition due to gut reactions or some negative consequences. But the misrepresentation of my argument is, I don't know, just bizarre to me.

The definition of charisma for 5e is: "confidence, eloquence, leadership," and "... your ability to interact effectively with others. It includes such factors as confidence and eloquence, and it can represent a charming or commanding personality." Its related skills are: deception, intimidation, performance, persuasion.

So I will drop the whole thing once someone answers this question: How does confidence, eloquence, leadership, being charming or commanding work with things like species, cultures, languages, religions, etc? For clarification, I mean, if there is no universality to beauty, then why would there be a universal marker for leadership or charming or eloquence - especially when other languages, decorum, and social morays are involved?

 

[Jahydin]

I think what people want is for there to be some quantifiable advantage for beauty that they can point to, because, as I admitted in my first post in this thread, people do react better to beautiful people. But because standards of beauty might not translate from species to species (Elves notwithstanding), this quickly starts to break down. What a human finds attractive might not hold true for a Warforged or a Tortle or a Bugbear.

I see where you're coming from, but that same argument could be made for "non-appearance" Charisma aspects too, right? So why cut the physical aspect out?

I think it does highlight the problem of D&D getting more "weird". The more bugbears and devils at the local tavern, the more unclear terms like Charisma and Alignment become.

You want to say your character is charismatic and hot, go right ahead, nobody is going to stop you. But saying your character is charismatic because of their hotness is always going to bring up these debates because it's a complex issue.

People always used to tell me how overwhelmingly hot Angelina Jolie was. And I just didn't see it. "She's ok, I guess", I'd say. And that's not getting into how many celebrities are considered attractive who have the personalities of wet cardboard.

Whenever appearance come up, everyone assumes "sexiness'". Maybe this is the reason it was taken out of the Charisma description?

I think the folks advocating for appearance as part of the description have "striking features" in mind, not "hotness". For instance, an elaborate scarification design on an orc could be something appreciated without being "attractive".

Great post btw.

 

[le Redoutable]

just one thing: " it's in your eyes " , beauty is in the eyes.
appearance is more like a looks thing.

( and for my own satisfaction, something that's irrelevant to the topic : )

Spoiler: six stats for the six worlds

6 Elves --- Cha
5 Dwarves - Str
4 Humans -- Wis
3 Demons -- Dex
2 Undeads - Con
1 Devils -- Int

 

[Clint_L]

So everyone can misquote everything I have said, here you go:

• I think charisma should only be based on looks.
• I think charisma should have a one word definition - beauty.
• I think charisma can only be tied to pretty, and only in human modern-day standards.
• (Of course, all of this is sarcasm.)

You can use these as quotes to constantly and purposefully misstate what I have said. It's ridiculous, just like the DM argument. I have repeatedly espoused it be part (part, not all) of the definition. How everyone can read it as anything other than that is incomprehensible to me.

I appreciate people who don't want it in the definition due to gut reactions or some negative consequences. But the misrepresentation of my argument is, I don't know, just bizarre to me.

The definition of charisma for 5e is: "confidence, eloquence, leadership," and "... your ability to interact effectively with others. It includes such factors as confidence and eloquence, and it can represent a charming or commanding personality." Its related skills are: deception, intimidation, performance, persuasion.

So I will drop the whole thing once someone answers this question: How does confidence, eloquence, leadership, being charming or commanding work with things like species, cultures, languages, religions, etc? For clarification, I mean, if there is no universality to beauty, then why would there be a universal marker for leadership or charming or eloquence - especially when other languages, decorum, and social morays are involved?

First, this sounds like you actually can't answer the fundamental question "how can beauty be objectively measured?" so you are moving the goalposts: "how can anything be objectively measured, really?"

But I think we can all understand how "confidence, eloquence, leadership" are much more objective qualities that can easily be applied across species. Confidence, for example, is contained within the person themselves, leadership can be quantified by how inclined others are to follow them, which does not seem necessarily species dependent to me, and eloquence, which I would define as facility with language, again does not seem species dependent.

Confidence in particular seems relevant to this discussion, because it explains how, say, a Warlock is able to power their spells. To me, that can be quantifiable as an internal quality that does not depend at all upon context.

I suppose you could argue that beauty also could be entirely internal - it's what we think of our own appearance - but then we get right back to "it's entirely up to the player."

And all of that is setting aside the actual harm that obsession with physical appearance does in the world, which makes it an enormous problem to try to force it into the rules of D&D. I'm not ever going to mention to a teen girl that she needs to consider the relationship between her character's physical appearance and their "confidence, eloquence, and leadership."

Edit: has there ever been one player who did not think about what their character looked like? What is the problem that this minor rules change is meant to address, again?

 

[Cadence]

Unfortunately, VtM has an Appearance attribute that is separate from Charisma and Manipulation, which just creates it's own kind of havoc. It's also worth noting that Appearance does almost nothing in the system; there are very few examples of Appearance rolls in the rulebooks, and it's mostly tied to a (largely ignored) subsystem where your maximum social dice allowed when first meeting someone is your Appearance rating ("Yes, I know you have 9 dice of Charisma and Etiquette, but it says right here since you only have Appearance 3, you only get to roll 3 dice, no matter how suave you are").

That's why I went with their Presence Discipline

Thinking back (a long time), I don't remember any Appearance rolls when we played VtM 2e, but it feels like it had some uses once in awhile for opening doors when it was really high.

Was VtM the first of the games? Appearance (high or low) seems a big thing in some classic vampire stories. And everything involved is generally human. If one of the other games had higher priority, I wonder if they would have had a different third social stat.

 

[Scott Christian]

"how can beauty be objectively measured?"

I did answer that in my very first post.

D&D, being a different universe, must have created a different norm for beauty. I mean, if you have elephant people, turtle people, cat people, dragon people, merfolk people, silver skinned people, orange skinned people, green skinned people, robot people, demon people, devil people, bearded women, etc. AND, all these people manage to live together, side by side, with nary a remark about how ugly the others are, then it stands to reason that they have a universal definition of beauty. One that translates across species. Of all the adventure paths and NPCs created by WotC, there is never a character that spouts stuff like: "Those dwarven women are hideous. Kissin' a scratchy beard - gross!" Never a disparaging remark about tails, horns, scales, or cloven feet. So they must have a universal view of beauty. Which, in my opinion, sounds kind of nice.

You may not like the answer. You may disagree that a logic like that shouldn't exist in the D&D world. But I did answer that in reference to appearance being part of the definition.

But I think we can all understand how "confidence, eloquence, leadership" are much more objective qualities that can easily be applied across species.

And thank you for taking the time to answer. But we diverge right from the beginning. Those qualities are no more objective than beauty. They are abstracts, just like all the abilities. And like all the abilities, in my humble opinion, the broader, the better.

But thank you for answering. I understand where you are coming from and appreciate the discussion.

 

[le Redoutable]

there also is a link in between Appearance and Seduction

 

[Charlaquin]

@BookTenTiger @Aldarc @Charlaquin
We're still discussing appearance is just one of the many factors that can contribute to Charisma right?

I understand strong reactions to "Charisma IS your appearance", but not so much it might influence it.

I understand that. My position is still that including text saying that appearance is one of the factors that can contribute to Charisma does not allow the player to do anything they can’t already do, but does open the door to DMs being more restrictive about what the players can do.

 

[ECMO3]

More evidence that objections here have very little to do with practical reality and measurable behavior, and much more to do with wishful thinking and changing social mores. Verisimilitude be darned!

It is perhaps a reflection of social mores, but that is not a bad thing.

Physical strength is tied to size and gender certainly more than beauty is tied to charisma and in a more objectively measurable fashion as well. Should your strength score be based on your size and gender - or to put it more plainly, should we limit how strong small and female characters are allowed to be, so we more accurately reflect practical reality and measurable traits? Would improving the "realism" here be an improvement in the game itself?

D&D is a fantasy game. The very core of it is counter to the laws of Physics. Even if there is a real world tie between Charisma and beauty (and I would argue any such tie is weak to start with), including it in the game will detract from the game experience for many, many players.

 

[Clint_L]

I did answer that in my very first post.

You may not like the answer. You may disagree that a logic like that shouldn't exist in the D&D world. But I did answer that in reference to appearance being part of the definition.

And thank you for taking the time to answer. But we diverge right from the beginning. Those qualities are no more objective than beauty. They are abstracts, just like all the abilities. And like all the abilities, in my humble opinion, the broader, the better.

But thank you for answering. I understand where you are coming from and appreciate the discussion.

Thank you for pointing out that you did address the problem of a universal definition of beauty in your OP, but you did not actually solve that problem. Your response, to paraphrase," is that "there must be a solution because there is no evidence that all these disparate creatures think of each other as ugly."

I'm setting aside your assertion that "of all the adventure paths and NPCs created by WotC, there is never a character that spouts [insults about another species being ugly]" because neither you nor I can feasibly check that claim, though the burden of proof would be much easier for me, since I would just have to find one example.

But your claim itself is an assertion, not an argument. One issue is that you don't actually present any positive evidence for your claim, and your contention that there is an absence of counter evidence could be explained in many ways that do not lead to your conclusion that there must be a universal standard of beauty. For example, how much extraneous dialogue in general do adventure paths contain? As well, maybe (probably) in a world full of disparate sentient creatures they have generally learned that what is attractive to them is not what is attractive to others, and so there is no point in an Elf commenting that, say, a Tortle is not sexy to them because duh.

The other issue, is that if there is some such undefinable universal standard for beauty, the fact that neither you nor I can say what it is means that it could be anything. Which again takes us back to letting the player decide.