Linking CHA and Beauty

[Felix]

And personally, I think the metaphor is a little stronger my way, because while Defense is actually a defineable part of the game, the color of the jerseys is just what they look like.

So when you meet someone for the first time, what they look like is absolutely irrelevant to how you react to them?

 

[phindar]

Hey, I never said I wasn't shallow. I just think how they look should be irrelevant to their casting stat.

Here's how I have it breaking down right now:

Beauty relates to CHA:

a) Never

b) Always

c) Sometimes

Let's concentrate for a moment on the Sometimes. In what situation would you as a GM let a character's CHA score dictate their physical appearance? Do you think there is a point where a player's description of their character gets too beautiful without a stat backing it up? How would this differ from a player saying their character was highly physically attractive because they have the body of an Adonis, backed up by an 18 STR and a 16 CON?

Let's take the Invisible Stalker as an example. They have a CHA of 11. If through a unique magical effect an Invisible Stalker and a person were to switch consciousnesses (similar to a Magic Jar spell), would it make sense to alter either the person or the stalker's CHA? Would it matter if the person were Victoria Secret Lingerie Model Adriana Lima? (I was going to link to a picture of Adriana Lima, but I couldn't find one that would pass the grandmother test.)

What if one of your players used a picture of Adriana Lima as a picture of their half-elf barbarian, but she had an 8 CHA? Would you object? What if the character had an 18 STR? (What if it was a half orc, and the player had doodled tusks on the picture?)

 

[Aaron L]

This is the part I can't wrap my head around. If there IS a connection between CHA and Beauty, but its not one that causes High CHA people to be beautiful, nor is it one that causes beautiful people to have a High CHA then what's the connection? If Beauty and CHA can be completely separate from one another, in what sense are they linked?

If a High CHA can make a character beautiful, but so can anything else, then what's the value of linking beauty to CHA?

What I have been trying to say is that Charisma DOES cause beauty. Whether it is beauty of the soul, beauty of the face, or beauty of the mind, or raw magical might and strength of presence is up to the player of the character.

You can have beauty of the face without high Charisma, but it's a superficial, shallow beauty that is only skin deep (as the saying goes), and you won't have beauty of the soul or mind. A high Charisma means that you would have beauty in all the areas that the stat covers, or average qualities in one of the those sreas and very high levels in the others, in varying combinations.

Just like a character with high Dexterity could be so clumsy he trips over his own feet, but have hand/eye coordination of almost metahuman levels.

But Charisma does cause beauty. Not necessarily physical attractiveness, but some kind of beauty. And it all stems from the innate divinity and mystical power that Charisma represents, shining through to be seen by the outside world.

And as I asked before; ALL of the stats represent multiple related components wrapped up together into convenient packages, and always have. Charisma has always had an element of beauty included under it's jurisdiction (an I'm glad they fully embraced and expanded upon it's more classical mystical/divine element in 3E as well)

So why take special offense at ONE of the stats being this way? Why not get equally worked up about Dexterity being a combination of gross motor control and hand/eye coordination combined with kinesthetic awareness and balance? Or Wisdom being a combination of willpower, enlightenment, mental fortitude, and perception?


If it's just because you think it's dictating to you how your character has to actually LOOK, then you have to realize it ISN'T. It's saying that your character has to be beautiful in some way, but that doesn't necessarily have to mean physically beautiful.

And ALL the stats dictate to you how your character is.

Really, actually just about all of the stats are, to a certain extent, dictating how your character should look (at least the physical ones.) Your character with an 18 Strength really shouldn't be a scrawny beanpole, after all. Unless you have some really good reason for it.

 

[phindar]

You can have beauty of the face without high Charisma, but you won't have beauty of the soul or mind.

You'll have to forgive me because with all the back-and-forth we're having a couple of different discussions here. I didn't mean to forget about you, but all the arguments have different nuances and the conversation has drifted away from certain points.

I don't see CHA as a measure of a person's inner beauty, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, complete and utter scumbags can have very high CHA scores in the game (and in real life, but bear in mind I work in bar, so I have a very dim view of humanity.) I think a character's inner beauty-- say their good and true nature, their pure heart-- can shine through, but I wouldn't tie it to CHA (or any other ability). A character could have an 18 CHA (and Int and Wis) and push little old ladies down stairs, poke dogs with forks, have a heart as black as pitch and a soul as empty as the void. Con men have high CHA scores, I wouldn't necessarily associate them with inner beauty.

But Charisma does cause beauty. Not necessarily physical attractiveness, but some kind of beauty.

I've been using beauty and physical attractiveness synomously. I'm not sure how productive it would be to say a character can be beautiful but not physically attractive, or vice versa. We could say that CHA does not cause physical attractiveness, and leave the discussion of beauty for another day, since odds are we're defining it differently. (But I still don't buy the idea of CHA as inner beauty, for the reasons listed above.)

If a player wanted to define his character as beautiful because of inner beauty shining through, and wanted the inner beauty to likewise reflect a high CHA that's fine, but I still don't link beauty (inner or outer) to CHA. (Because the character could have that CHA score even if he was a scumbag, or he could have a 6 CHA and still have a good and pure heart.) If someone was playing a Paladin with a 6 CHA, I wouldn't say that their character was any less pure of heart than a paladin with a higher CHA.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I've been using beauty and physical attractiveness synomously. I'm not sure how productive it would be to say a character can be beautiful but not physically attractive, or vice versa.

Especially since the PHB doesn't link Cha to beauty; it links it to physical attractiveness. If you draw a distinction between the two, then by the rules, it's the second one Charisma describes, not the first.

-Hyp.

 

[Aaron L]

Ok maybe "beauty" was bad phraseology. What I meant by "beauty of the mind" and such was "powerful personality." "Beauty of the soul" should be "powerful inherent sorcerous power." Just as "beauty of the face" is physical attractiveness.

Beauty in a philosophical, Platonic Ideal sense.

But my point still stands. Charisma can manifest as a powerful personality, physical attractiveness, powerful mystic potential, or a few other things, all as reflections of the divine, mystic potential that Charisma represents. They are all components of the abstract characteristic that is Charisma.

 

[phindar]

Actually, I wasn't going to bring it up, but you could interpret the PHB's term "physically attractive" as your ability to attract people physically, meaning sexually. So if you don't use "physical attractiveness" as a synonym for beauty, and instead your ability to get people to want to sleep with you, you aren't changing the PHB text, but you are divorcing CHA from any mention of appearance.

But even so, its still a pretty common assumption to link CHA to appearance, which was the main reason I started this topic. (If you'll recall, this all got started when someone posted a picture of a beautiful woman and objected to the CHA 8 on the character sheet.)

Edit: You slipped in on me there, Aaron. The above post was in direct response to Hyp's point. In response to yours, if you want to say a character's beauty springs out of their High CHA I don't have any more of a problem with it than if it came from anywhere else, but ultimately I see that as the whim of the player to determine how and why their character looks the way it does, rather than as a direct link (one way or the other) to CHA.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Actually, I wasn't going to bring it up, but you could interpret the PHB's term "physically attractive" as your ability to attract people physically, meaning sexually. So if you don't use "physical attractiveness" as a synonym for beauty, and instead your ability to get people to want to sleep with you, you aren't changing the PHB text, but you are divorcing CHA from any mention of appearance.

So they're 'physically attractive', but in a way that has nothing to do with appearance?

... ooo-okay.

Edit: You slipped in on me there, Aaron. The above post was in direct response to Hyp's point. In response to yours, if you want to say a character's beauty springs out of their High CHA I don't have any more of a problem with it than if it came from anywhere else, but ultimately I see that as the whim of the player to determine how and why their character looks the way it does, rather than as a direct link (one way or the other) to CHA.

Would you have a problem with a player describing his character as "the most graceful man alive", despite a Dex of 6? He still takes his -2 to AC, ranged attacks, Reflex saves, Balance checks... but he expects NPCs to notice and comment on how impeccably he moves, his catlike elegance, and so on.

-Hyp.

 

[phindar]

You see why I didn't want to bring it up. It's slicing it pretty thin, and I think its more productive to attack the idea that CHA determines appearance rather than get into a semantic argument over the RAW. (Personally, I have no trouble believing the authors intended to link CHA to beauty, which is why I've been using the terms synonomously.)

 

[phindar]

Would you have a problem with a player describing his character as "the most graceful man alive", despite a Dex of 6? He still takes his -2 to AC, ranged attacks, Reflex saves, Balance checks... but he expects NPCs to notice and comment on how impeccably he moves, his catlike elegance, and so on.

Well, the problem I have is that DEX determines gracefulness (to a lesser extent than skills, but still) whereas I don't think any link exists between a character's appearance and his CHA. If a character wanted to play an Inspector Clouseau type who seems elegant but still regularly manages to fall down stairs and fail the majority of his DEX based rolls, I really don't see the big deal.

Its been asked why I object to CHA defining two unrelated things (personality and appearance) but not to DEX covering motor skills and balance. Motor skills and balance may not be related, but they do relate to DEX as it is written in the game. (To divide them, you'd have to create another ability so that one could cover Sleight of Hand while the other covered Tumbling. Or you could make a character with a 6 DEX, but 15 ranks in Balance, he'd be graceful, but lack fine motor skills.)

Appearance, on the other hand, I see as Fluff and not only separate from personality, but separate from CHA as a game concept. I don't think your casting stat or your Turn Attempts per day should be related to how you look. And there seems to be no shortage of high CHA people in the real world who are dogs, or low CHA people who are models. (A supermodel who is not a talented platoon commander doesn't seem to be that far outside the norm, for example.) So its pretty easy for me to buy the idea that CHA is not dependent on beauty, nor is beauty dependent on CHA. To me, that's the same as saying they aren't linked.

The point I'm trying to clarify is for those that agree beauty and CHA are not dependent on one another, but still say they're linked. If for instance CHA can make a character beautiful, but so can INT, WIS, STR, CON, DEX or any nebulous factor we choose, if the player can simply say, "My character is good-looking" without any qualifier at all, in what way does being good-looking rely on CHA?