Linking CHA and Beauty

[S'mon]

Here's my two-fold problem with that. 1) There are abundant examples of high charisma uggos in the real world (as well as annoying beautiful people),

Hm, I think high-CHA people are pretty much always widely considered attractive by many, whatever their physical features. The women of Germany swooned over Hitler. Plenty of facially unremarkable Hollywood actors would be considered attractive simply because of their charisma, even aside from their wallets. I guess there are extreme examples like Steve Buscemi who would widely be considered both charismatic and ugly, but that's fairly rare and even then I suspect most ladies wouldn't turn him down.

 

[DonTadow]

This is my response to the idea of linking CHA and physical attractiveness from another thread. Instead of posting it there where it'd be off topic, I thought it would be more considerate to make it its own thread and continue this facet of the discussion here. To sum up, I don't think a character's physical attractiveness should factor into his CHA score, because beauty is subjective, and CHA actually does something. I don't think a paladin's lay on hands, a cleric's turn attempts, or a sorcerer's bonus spells and save DCs should be dependent in part on how hot the character is.


I agree, but thats why I think CHA and beauty should be considered separate. If they are linked, by that logic you could make one character who is ugly and forceful, another meek and hot, and they could have the same CHA score. They would get the same number of bonus spells as Sorcerers, one for having a forceful personality, the other for being pretty.

That is to say, if CHA is linked to beauty but you can make a character a high CHA as ugly as you want and a low CHA as beautiful as you want, in what way is CHA linked to beauty? If the book says they are linked, but we are saying they can be completely independent from one another--that you can make high CHA uggos and low CHA hotties-- then they aren't really linked. It doesn't make any sense to say CHA is a measure of physical attractiveness, except when it isn't, which can whenever.

Beauty is a role playing component. Its description and how you describe your character.

Charisma is how you come off. Thats why is linked to diplomacy and other social skills. It desnt even mean the player talks good (well). It just means that that player has a certain aura that makes them likeable.

Im sure many of us have met some attractive people with horrible personalities and some not so attractive people whom are not only a blast to be around, but attract people to them because of it.

 

[RFisher]

If it were up to me, my main grief with modern Charisma is that, indeed, it doesn't make sense to use as a spellcasting statistic for Sorcerers. It's an obvious shoehorn to make up "something" that uses Charisma for the prime requisite. I'd prefer to fix Sorcerers is this regard and not re-define Charisma for them.

The idea of magic as a supernatural extension of charisma is ancient. The problem with the Sorcerer class isn't (IMHO, of course) that it uses Cha. It's that it just reuses the Wiz spell list.

I'm pretty sure that scientific research has demonstrated that there are consistent, measurable differences in physical attractiveness between different people.....so it's not necessarily in the eye of the beholder at all.

I have serious doubts about any attempt to apply science to human behavior. Even the best usually don't really measure what they claim to measure when you look at the details.

Cameron Diaz looked a whole lot better in "The Mask" than in "Charlies Angels: Full Throttle".

But perhaps that's just me.

It's not just you. I've found Cameron Diaz unappealing in every movie I've seen her it. That movie that was predicated on Janine Garofalo being "ugly" & Uma Thurman being "beautiful" completely baffled me.

It's not as if Charisma is busy modifying all that many thing in-game; don't you think adding another stat, and then providing situations where it would modify a roll would necessarily take away from CHA, the next most obvious choice for beauty-related interactions?

"Beauty-related interactions" fall under Cha not because Cha correllates to comliness but because "beauty" is not only skin deep. A separate comliness score, however, is not needed because, even if it were objective enough to put a score on, there's never a need to apply that score to anything. Because charisma trumps comliness.

 

[billd91]

Hm, I think high-CHA people are pretty much always widely considered attractive by many, whatever their physical features. The women of Germany swooned over Hitler. Plenty of facially unremarkable Hollywood actors would be considered attractive simply because of their charisma, even aside from their wallets. I guess there are extreme examples like Steve Buscemi who would widely be considered both charismatic and ugly, but that's fairly rare and even then I suspect most ladies wouldn't turn him down.

Wasn't it Henry Kissinger who said "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac"? I'm not sure I would say they swooned over his Charisma, which wore thin among the people cooped up with him as the war went on, as much as they swooned over him because he had totalitarian political power.
If it worked to get Kissinger dates with Marlo Thomas, Jill St. John, Shirley MacLaine, and Candice Bergen, I'm sure it could work for der Top Nazi.

 

[dcas]

Am I alone here in actually liking the Comeliness stat from UA-era 1e?

 

[S'mon]

It's not just you. I've found Cameron Diaz unappealing in every movie I've seen her it. That movie that was predicated on Janine Garofalo being "ugly" & Uma Thurman being "beautiful" completely baffled me.

I share your judgement, IMO Garofalo is far more attractive than Thurman (or Diaz), but it doesn't entirely baffle me now since I've read some stuff about how the people who direct Hollywood movies like tall ice-pale skinny blondes, and dislike short dark-haired women like Garofalo, for cultural reasons.

 

[S'mon]

If it worked to get Kissinger dates with Marlo Thomas, Jill St. John, Shirley MacLaine, and Candice Bergen, I'm sure it could work for der Top Nazi.

A desire to date the rich and powerful like Kissinger is not the same as Beatlemania-style swooning over eg Hitler; the former is rational self-interested behaviour, the latter is something else, something to do with charisma.

 

[phindar]

You can have heat without light, light without heat, also both together, and also neither. And yet they are both an expression of energy.

Aaron L. already said as much quite succinctly, though you ignored that part of the post and focused on "CHA causes physical beauty". But so can other things, like a player deciding it so.

Now, if you say that beauty is simply a part of CHA, and the player decides how much, and mechanically it all comes out in the wash, aren't you still leaving us with the problem of having Sorc bonus spells for being pretty? (If a player says, "My character has no personal magnetism, no ability to lead, no force of personality, its all Physical Beauty and I have a CHA of 18," does he then get a 1st-4th level bonus spell as a Sorcerer?)

If you say a character must have a high CHA to be beautiful, and a character with a low CHA must be ugly; I still don't agree with it, but its consistent. Steve Buschemi and Paris Hilton aside, you're saying CHA determines physical attractiveness. (I'm a little lost as to why a mental stat determines physical attractiveness, but we can come at that again later.)

But if you say that high CHA characters can be ugly, and low CHA characters can be pretty, and that players get to decide what their character looks like regardless of CHA stat, then in what way are you saying CHA and beauty are linked?

 

[Felix]

aren't you still leaving us with the problem of having Sorc bonus spells for being pretty?

No.

If he is pretty, then he is pretty because of his high CHA. He also enjoys bonus spells because of a high CHA.

They both have the same cause, though they are not themselves in a causal relationship with each other. An internal combustion engine produces forward momentum in a car and also produces heat: the heat released does not produce forward momentum, nor does being pretty provide bonus spells.

"My character has no personal magnetism, no ability to lead, no force of personality, its all Physical Beauty and I have a CHA of 18," does he then get a 1st-4th level bonus spell as a Sorcerer?

Yes, he gets his bonus spells from high CHA. As aparrently he gets his beauty from. And this player's understanding of CHA seems to mirror yours.

If you say a character must have a high CHA to be beautiful, and a character with a low CHA must be ugly

Which I never did claim...

then in what way are you saying CHA and beauty are linked?

If physical beauty has multiple causes, two possibilities being "high Charisma" and "player whining", but neither cause is necessary for physical beauty, then it becomes possible to have beauty without charisma as long as an alternative cause is present. And yet charisma and beauty are still linked because Charisma is a possible source of beauty, regardless of weather or not it causes it in every circumstance.

Consider "Winning the Superbowl" having two possible causes: "Best Offense" and "Best Defense". You can win the bowl with either, but you don't have to have both or either one in particular.

In this way, a bowl-winning team can win without the best offense.
A bowl winning team can win without the best defense.
A team with the best offense can lose at the superbowl.
A team with the best defense can lose at the superbowl.

Do you suggest that having the best offense and the best defense is not linked to winning the superbowl simply because there does not exist a direct causal relationship?

 

[GreatLemur]

If he is pretty, then he is pretty because of his high CHA. He also enjoys bonus spells because of a high CHA.

Yes, he gets his bonus spells from high CHA. As aparrently he gets his beauty from. And this player's understanding of CHA seems to mirror yours.

So if the numeric ability score is the source of the character's actual traits rather than a descriptor of them, then what exactly is "Charisma", in your view? What quality of the individual is simultaneously generating magical power and physical beauty? Is it just a "shut up; don't worry about it" stat like hit points?