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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6944840" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Sort of, but not exactly. I'm hypothesizing that &quot;beauty&quot;, from an evolutionary standpoint, is a signal for health*. Like all signals, it can be forged (that's what makeup, airbrushing, etc. are), and evolution isn't perfect so you can wind up with a signal that doesn't correlate perfectly with the underlying trait. But overall yes, I'm arguing that using Constitution as a proxy for purely physical attractiveness is as reasonable as anything else we do in D&amp;D, e.g. treating cardiovascular health and immunological health as perfect correlates both represented by Constitution.I acknowledge such nuances without feeling the need to represent them in the game. If you want to say your Con 6 PC is waifishly beautiful anyway, fine; but by default, I'm going to perceive a Con 16 Cha 7 PC as a big dumb hunk of movie-star-gorgeous foot-in-mouth eye-candy (like Kevin the secretary from 2016's Ghostbusters), but a Con 7 Cha 16 PC as strangely compelling despite his physical flaws (like Rasputin).*ObVolo's: hags perceive lank hair, warts and bruises as beautiful, and smooth skin and healthy hair as repulsive. Only the youngest and humblest of hags can stand to fake conventional beauty using illusions in order to fit in with the fey courts. I wonder what quality it is that hags' sense of beauty is keyed into. Magical power maybe? If aunties and grandmothers naturally get more wrinkled and wartier over time, as most people in fact do, and if exposure to the dark arts and weird magic of hags tends to cause additional physical deformities over time, then forging wrinkles/warts/etc. might be a sign of power, which is attractive to hags, whereas smooth skin might be a sign of impotence, which is not.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6944840, member: 6787650"] Sort of, but not exactly. I'm hypothesizing that "beauty", from an evolutionary standpoint, is a signal for health*. Like all signals, it can be forged (that's what makeup, airbrushing, etc. are), and evolution isn't perfect so you can wind up with a signal that doesn't correlate perfectly with the underlying trait. But overall yes, I'm arguing that using Constitution as a proxy for purely physical attractiveness is as reasonable as anything else we do in D&D, e.g. treating cardiovascular health and immunological health as perfect correlates both represented by Constitution. I acknowledge such nuances without feeling the need to represent them in the game. If you want to say your Con 6 PC is waifishly beautiful anyway, fine; but by default, I'm going to perceive a Con 16 Cha 7 PC as a big dumb hunk of movie-star-gorgeous foot-in-mouth eye-candy (like Kevin the secretary from 2016's Ghostbusters), but a Con 7 Cha 16 PC as strangely compelling despite his physical flaws (like Rasputin). *ObVolo's: hags perceive lank hair, warts and bruises as beautiful, and smooth skin and healthy hair as repulsive. Only the youngest and humblest of hags can stand to fake conventional beauty using illusions in order to fit in with the fey courts. I wonder what quality it is that hags' sense of beauty is keyed into. Magical power maybe? If aunties and grandmothers naturally get more wrinkled and wartier over time, as most people in fact do, and if exposure to the dark arts and weird magic of hags tends to cause additional physical deformities over time, then forging wrinkles/warts/etc. might be a sign of power, which is attractive to hags, whereas smooth skin might be a sign of impotence, which is not. [/QUOTE]

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