I know... I know... We've been down this road before. But please hear me out: Charisma should include beauty. Right now it's "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." Beauty needs to be included. Here's why.
I can't say I find your arguments persuasive...
- Deception, performance, persuasion, and yes, even intimidation deals with a character's looks. There is a reason performers look the way they do. Many, if not most that do well, are very good looking. Sting could not be Sting without his looks. The same is true for Tina Turner, Cher, or many other famous artists. And are there ones that aren't? Sure. But they are far outweighed by the ones that stand out from the crowd. One only needs to look at the recent Therenos scandal to understand that it wouldn't have worked if it was run by someone that looked like a normal person. Performance is a no brainer, as that is half the sales of a performance. Persuasion, same thing. I mean, advertising uses looks, especially sexy looks, to convince people to buy things. And looks, particularly beauty, is paramount to true intimidation. The old Greek stories, Roman stories, and pretty much every ancient culture's stories laid the groundwork for this.
You chose mostly performers as examples, who are part of a modern advertising system that relies on physical beauty. However, a good performer can be a good actor without fitting to those standards (Danny Devito, say), and a poor performer can be poor actor while also meeting those standards.
Historically, Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln were two politicians who were famously persuasive, and yet did not meet "high beauty standards." Would you give them low Charisma?
- Another reason is that there is nothing on the sheet to measure beauty. Yet, beauty is one of the very first things anyone sees in a person. A tall, dark and handsome guy walks into the room and people stare. A lady with perfect features walks into the room and people stare. It seems silly to not have it listed on the character sheet somewhere since it is so (soooooo) prevalent among all societies across the world. And before anyone starts talking about beauty norms changing, please let's discuss. Because it leads to the third reason. The one that is most important. The one that is the glue to this entire claim.
There is a whole area on the sheet for physical descriptions. You could write "beautiful" on there if you want.
- 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.
I think this actually weakens your argument. Since there are so many different kinds of people, no one beauty standards could actually fit... Whereas Strength and Constitution, etc, are more or less able to be universally measured. So Charisma, as a universal ability, has to be able to match all these different looking people. It makes more sense for Charisma to be an ability that measures your effectiveness in influencing others, rather than a physical characteristic.
There you go. Charisma should include beauty. It's just a beauty we have a hard time wrapping our head around.
I cannot say that your own Charisma check to convince me worked! Famously, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I believe it should stay there. Allow each player to decide on the physical characteristics of their character. Just as how a Halfling can have high strength, allow an ugly character to have high charisma or a beautiful character to have low Charisma.
