ThirdWizard
First Post
punkorange said:
Who can get the info from the bad guys, Batman or Superman?
Comeliness has returned!
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Who can get the info from the bad guys, Batman or Superman?
barsoomcore
Unattainable Ideal
When you were born, the doctor threw you out the Ugly Window and you landed in the Ugly Tree and you hit EVERY SINGLE BRANCH on the way down. And then it looks like you got gnawed on by the Ugly Dog.
Looking really awesome is just an advantage, and I think a feat is the way to go. Just a "Good-Looking" feat -- which means you look good enough that you get a bonus on Diplomacy checks. It's basically Skill Focus: Diplomacy with a little fluff.
Looking really awesome is just an advantage, and I think a feat is the way to go. Just a "Good-Looking" feat -- which means you look good enough that you get a bonus on Diplomacy checks. It's basically Skill Focus: Diplomacy with a little fluff.
reveal
Adventurer
ThirdWizard said:
That's not a fair comparison. Superman has a reputation as a boy scout. Batman does not. Sure, Batman quietly threatens and just seems "colder" than Superman but that doesn't mean that if someone didn't know them Batman would get the info any better than Superman.
How about this. Let's say there's a guy tied to a chair and 2 captors in front of him. Captor 1 is a skinny guy who quietly tells the guy that he will not kill him but will do horrible things to his loved ones. Captor 1 seems sincere (high Charisma) so the guy spills the beans.
Captor 2, on the other hand, is a big brute with a huge club who threatens to break every bone in the guys body if he doesn't cooperate. The guy is scared crapless by Captor 2 ( high Strength) and spills the beans.
Either scenario is viable.
Remathilis
Legend
Heh, there was a planescape module (I don't know if it was Dead Gods or Beyond Countless Doors or somesuch) where these lizardmen were stealing charisma with a special wand and selling it to uncharismatic people. They really didn't LOOK all that different, but you felt a supernatural feeling that they were ugly and repulsive.
Upon interigating a victim of someone who mugged them in the street to steal his charisma with this magic wand, my character (a hard-nosed tiefling) declared
"By Heavens, you WERE beaten by the ugly stick!"
Upon interigating a victim of someone who mugged them in the street to steal his charisma with this magic wand, my character (a hard-nosed tiefling) declared
"By Heavens, you WERE beaten by the ugly stick!"
Saeviomagy
Adventurer
Superman has no ranks in intimidate. Batman has lots. That's what the real difference is.reveal said:
But it does prove that superman's strength can't possibly be coming into the equation to any significant degree.
Yup
Or lies. He reckons the brute won't catch on, and is dumb enough to untie him (or otherwise let him loose) to fulfil his part of the bargain. After that, he calls the authorities (or his own brutes) and has them beat captor 2 snotless. After all, he's just one tough guy.
He's not going to do that to captor 1, because captor 1 has his loved ones. Or so he thinks. And captor 1 has an organisation backing him up, or so he thinks. Etc etc.
"Me smash now" is scary, but in game terms, it's not intimidate. Intimidate means the guy is scared in just the right way that he does what you want.
I mean "strength should be used for intimidate" can be made into just as valid an argument for any other stat in the game. Who argues with the guy who's pulling the robin hood trick with thrown daggers? Who argues with the wizard who could conceivably turn them into a frog? Or the cleric who could curse them forever? Or....
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reveal
Adventurer
Saeviomagy said:
But that's not Intimidate, that's Bluff and Sense Motive. Using other skills, sure, the brute may not be as efficient as Captor 1, but that does not mean that Captor 1 is better at intimidating. I mean, if I walked down a dark alley and some big guy started smashing garbage cans with his bare hands you can be danged sure I'd be intimidated.
Rystil Arden
First Post
For those looking for a Feat for high Comeliness, we can base it off of the 'Alluring' feat from WoT d20, which gives +3 to Charisma-based checks against members of the opposite sex. It was a Regional Feat, so let's scale it back to +2. To bring it into D&D, which has multiple races, let's also make it only work on creatures with a race (and sexual orientation) that would generally be romantically inclined towards the character. This feat is significantly weaker than the vastly powerful Nymph's Kiss because it has become more situational (at best, if the DM plays a world with only one race, you can use this against half of the NPCs, unless of course the DM tends to produce gender-bias in their NPC ratio) and it doesn't give the +1 to saves or the extra skill point. Compared to the +2/+2 feats, this gives a bonus to 5 skills instead of 2, but less of the time. I would rule that part of the bonus comes from the confidence, attitude, and wiles garnered from years of growing up coddled as the handsome-boy/pretty-girl, so a player couldn't just gain this by using a Hat of Disguise to turn pretty.
For the flip-side, if you use the 3.x Unearthed Arcana's "flaws" system, I can imagine a flaw called 'Hideous' that gives you a -4 to interaction checks. However, I would be leery to allow this because "Hulk Smash!" players might use it to take a roleplaying hit so they can get more combat feats. Perhaps it needs to be more potent, something like "Your hideous visage causes all NPCs you encounter to initially treat you as one category worse on the reaction chart [so from Friendly to Indifferent for instance]. You may still attempt to influence them higher normally, with a -2 penalty to the Diplomacy check." That might more accurately depict the large initial reaction to ugliness that can be overcome by a charismatic-yet-ugly character, but someone with a Hat of Disguise could still effectively negate this. The upside is that initial reactions are more noticable for a barbarian who never parleys anyway (for instance, when the surly barkeep in the tavern his friends have been raving about takes one look at him and calls the bouncers to throw the hideous abomination out without giving him a chance to speak).
Tell me what you think of this solution. Too powerful? Not enough? A stupid idea to begin with?
For the flip-side, if you use the 3.x Unearthed Arcana's "flaws" system, I can imagine a flaw called 'Hideous' that gives you a -4 to interaction checks. However, I would be leery to allow this because "Hulk Smash!" players might use it to take a roleplaying hit so they can get more combat feats. Perhaps it needs to be more potent, something like "Your hideous visage causes all NPCs you encounter to initially treat you as one category worse on the reaction chart [so from Friendly to Indifferent for instance]. You may still attempt to influence them higher normally, with a -2 penalty to the Diplomacy check." That might more accurately depict the large initial reaction to ugliness that can be overcome by a charismatic-yet-ugly character, but someone with a Hat of Disguise could still effectively negate this. The upside is that initial reactions are more noticable for a barbarian who never parleys anyway (for instance, when the surly barkeep in the tavern his friends have been raving about takes one look at him and calls the bouncers to throw the hideous abomination out without giving him a chance to speak).
Tell me what you think of this solution. Too powerful? Not enough? A stupid idea to begin with?
Each to their own I say!
I think breaking apart the presence/comeliness aspects of charisma makes sense on some level, but then again, so would breaking dexterity down into agility/manual dexterity. You could break any stat down that way. I don't agree with a lot of the 3E changes individually, but in aggregate I have to admit that they really speed up play. So even though it is in my nature to add 'realism' where I can, I always question that urge in D&D, because added complexity tends to incrementally slow down play.
Having said that, it will be interesting to see down the road if you think it added to the role-playing experience! I hope it works out well for your game!
I think breaking apart the presence/comeliness aspects of charisma makes sense on some level, but then again, so would breaking dexterity down into agility/manual dexterity. You could break any stat down that way. I don't agree with a lot of the 3E changes individually, but in aggregate I have to admit that they really speed up play. So even though it is in my nature to add 'realism' where I can, I always question that urge in D&D, because added complexity tends to incrementally slow down play.
Having said that, it will be interesting to see down the road if you think it added to the role-playing experience! I hope it works out well for your game!
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