character scars

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Scarring is definitely house rules territory. The game simply does not consider the concept. My own house rule is that healing spells heal points of damage - end of story. Any wounding NOT represented as points of damage MUST, by definition, fall under other categories such as ability damage. Thus, no matter how much damage your PC sustains, no matter what it was that caused the damage, healing spells will heal not just points but all debilitations beyond that, such as might be represented by ability damage.

So, not all scarring will be healed. There will certainly be some tell-tale signs that you've been wounded in the past but no indication of how truly severe that was beyond a certain point. Unless you were hit by an additional effect that caused, say, charisma loss due to scarring, then you will have scarring, but short of what might be represented by charisma loss.

This enables DELIBERATE scarring, such branding thieves on the hand, or as body art by primitive tribes, to remain intact even when being healed. As long as the scarring is not of a type or extent to be ability damage, especially charisma, it will not be affected. The side effect is that it's difficult to get scars on the face - they just disappear with the first healing spell or potion. However, it's possible under relatively controlled circumstances to deliberately lower a victims charisma, or even dex. That is, to do damage that is not just hit points, but ability damage.

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

Unless it's to the level of a character having one arm completely torn off, I tend to leave this on the level of 'don't examine too closely'.

As for the whole high CHA = attractive, we've completely disassociated appearance from stats. In our playing style, stats are only used in non-social situations. Having someone roll dice to see if X person will talk to them just gets annoying, as does resolving other such personal issues with dice rolls - it rapidly gets too Vampire LARP 'paper rock scissors to see who wins the argument', which drives the whole lot of us up the wall.