Linking CHA and Beauty

[Felix]

My feeling is, if something isn't necessary for it, its not linked.

Is it necessary for the superbowl-winning football team to have the NFL's best defense?

No.

Are you suggesting that having the best defense in the NFL is not linked to winning the superbowl?

 

[Klaus]

Obviously, we disagree -- for me, this is one of the points in favor of earlier editions.

You lost me there.

UA 1e introduced Comeliness, but it was optional at best. And full of cheese. I played a Samurai with -6 Comeliness. 2e had nothing of the sort until Skills & Powers divided Charisma into Appearance and Personality.

3e has its own variant, the Distinctive trait. Wanna have a remarkable appearance? Take the trait, get a bonus to Reputation and a penalty to Disguise.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Spycraft has a feat that does something similar: it makes you hawt, giving a bonus to many Charisma-based skill checks but a penalty to "Blend" (hiding in a crowd) and maybe Disguise as well.

 

[the Jester]

The way I see it is a matter of degrees.

For a 14 cha, this could be a beautiful woman with an okay personalty, an ugly woman with an amazing personality, a slightly beautiful woman with a decent personality, etc.

However, once you start hitting 16-18, you need to have both. That's a person who is the cream of the crop, they have both good looks and a good personality.

How does this apply to monsters?

Illithids are soooo hot...

 

[Felix]

How does this apply to monsters?

Illithids are soooo hot...

I think the Japanese would agree, what with their anime-tentacle fixation.

 

[phindar]

Are you suggesting that having the best defense in the NFL is not linked to winning the superbowl?

I'm suggesting that linking beauty to CHA is like saying someone won the Superbowl because of the color of their jersey.

Here's the way I am looking at it. We'll call it 3 Possibilities:

#1. CHA and Beauty are not linked. CHA is the force of your personality, your personal magnetism, and your ability to lead. Physical attractiveness is a superficial, a "fluff" consideration, and can't be tied directly back to stats.

#2. CHA and Beauty are linked. As the sole stat that mentions physical attractiveness in the book, CHA determines physical attractiveness. Low CHA characters are ugly, High CHA characters are beautiful.

#3. CHA and Beauty are related, but they are also separate. This one I'm a little fuzzy on, because it seems paradoxical, but enough people have voted for it that I feel compelled to put it on the list. High CHA ugly people and Low CHA beautiful people are possible, that the various parts of CHA blend together to the final score, and a deficiency in one area can be made up by being exceptional in another area.

#1 is the opinion I have been pushing so far. #2 is the idea put forth by the RAW, but its also the easiest to discount, because so many of the conclusions you draw from it are ridiculous. (That all charismatic people are prettier, that you have to be pretty to be charismatic, that physical beauty determines Turn Attempts per day, and so on.)

#3 seems to be the idea you have put forth, but I have the same problem with #3 that I have with #2 (that physical attractiveness affects a Sorcerer's ability to cast, or that a Sorcerer's ability to cast affects his attractiveness) as I see physical attractiveness as a cosmetic consideration, and a particularly useless one in a game with 100's of creatures with radically different standards of beauty, plus the fact that #3 is contradictory. If CHA and Beauty are linked sometimes and completely separate sometimes, what's the point in saying they are linked? (If one character is beautiful because of his High CHA, and another has a Low Charisma and is beautiful, and a third has a High CHA and is ugly, wouldn't the logical conclusion be that CHA is not linked the beauty?)

For a 14 cha, this could be a beautiful woman with an okay personalty, an ugly woman with an amazing personality, a slightly beautiful woman with a decent personality, etc.

My problem with this is that the beautiful woman with the okay personality and the ugly woman with the amazing personality both get the same number of bonus spells per day as a Sorcerer. One gets her spells from having a forceful personality, the other, from being hot. This is a bridge too far for my suspension of disbelief.

 

[orsal]

(If one character is beautiful because of his High CHA, and another has a Low Charisma and is beautiful, and a third has a High CHA and is ugly, wouldn't the logical conclusion be that CHA is not linked the beauty?)

What about if, say, there are hundred beautiful characters with high CHA, and a hundred ugly characters with low CHA, but only three beautiful characters with low CHA and five ugly characters with high CHA? In other words, there is a correlation between beauty and charisma, but it isn't a perfect correlation.

I think this is what the people suggesting "linked, but different" are getting at. I might even endorse that view myself, if I could stipulate a very low correlation.

If there is such a correlation, there could be several different causal explanations for it. It could be that charisma is a contributing factor (but not sole determinant) to beauty; it could be that beauty is a contributing factor (but not sole determinant) to charisma; it could be that some other trait is a contributing factor to both.

 

[Felix]

I'm suggesting that linking beauty to CHA is like saying someone won the Superbowl because of the color of their jersey.

You didn't like the idea that a link between two things didn't have to be causal. "How can CHA and beauty be linked if you can have CHA or not, and have beauty or not?"

This is like asking, "How can having the best offense and winning the superbowl be linked if you can both win or lose the superbowl with or without the best offense?"

Mentioning jersy color dodges the issue: there is no difference between the models of the CHA/Beauty relationship and the Offense/Superbowl models, except that an alternative reason for winning the superbowl is provided.

Since you're so keen on the Fluff, I suggest that the alternative reason for a PC being physically beautiful is Fluff, and that should make you happy that there are no rules interfereing with it.

At the same time, acknowledge that simply because the physical beauty of a character is not causally linked to CHA, it does not mean there is no relationship; having the best offense does not cause you to win superbowls, but it would be foolish to assert that there is no relationship between having the best offense and winning.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Obviously, people who think beauty is related to Charisma are just shallow.

Or proponents of some sort of Objective Universal Beauty, something that can be measured.

Either way, we disagree.

 

[phindar]

I don't see physical attractiveness and CHA linking at all, so the Offense/Defense metaphor doesn't hold up for me; to me, physical attractiveness is the color of the jersey, because it doesn't factor in to the outcome of the game. It's purely cosmetic.

What about if, say, there are hundred beautiful characters with high CHA, and a hundred ugly characters with low CHA, but only three beautiful characters with low CHA and five ugly characters with high CHA? In other words, there is a correlation between beauty and charisma, but it isn't a perfect correlation.

The way I look at it, at the table, either CHA has an affect on a character's appearance, or it doesn't. If it does, then the CHA stat correlates to how the character looks, and if it doesn't, then the CHA stat is independent from the character's looks. I don't see any reason to say CHA and beauty are linked, except when they are not linked, which can be whenever you want it to be. (To me, that's the same thing as saying they aren't linked, since I never want them to be linked.)

Since you're so keen on the Fluff, I suggest that the alternative reason for a PC being physically beautiful is Fluff, and that should make you happy that there are no rules interfereing with it.

I'll repeat my post from earlier. If there are two reasons a character is (or is not) beautiful, and one is Charisma, and the other is Whim, what is the value of saying CHA and Beauty are linked?

On the one hand, you are saying a character can look like whatever they want regardless of CHA, because physical attractiveness and CHA are not always linked. But, when they are linked, you still run into the weird situation when a Sorcerer's bonus spells or a Cleric's Turn Attempts directly correlates to his physical attractiveness.

If the four elements of CHA listed in the book (force of personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness) are separate, but equal out to the CHA stat, then by that understanding a character could have average personal magnetism, ability to lead or force of personality, but be really, really beautiful and have a CHA of 16. Another character could have the same personal magnetism and such, but be plain looking, and have a 10 CHA. Character A gets multiple Turn Attempts based on nothing besides being more physically attractive. (If you think 6 points is to much for supreme hotness, you could make it four, two or just a point, but if it factors in at all you're leaving the door open to two characters equal in everything but hotness, with the hotter one getting more mechanical bonuses. If it gives you a mechanical bonus, its not fluff.)