Alternate Abilities "Replacing" DEX and CHA (PEACH I guess?)

[John Cribati]

I've been thinking this over for a bit, considering several argumants as to whether or not high Charisma automatically means that a character is very attractive. So I thought I'd take a page from the Book of Erotic Fantasy and assign an "Appearance" Score for the purpose of Physical Attractiveness. But I want to do it a bit differently:

Let's say you have Charisma 14. Branching off from Charisma, you have Appearance (APP) and Force Of Personality (FOP). Each of these has a base of 14 (Because your Charisma is 14). Here's the kick: You may increase either your APP score or your FOP score by up to X (Where X is a number decided at GM's Discretion), provided you decrease the other by the same amount. Under this system, Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information and Handle Animal, would be FOP based skills, while Disguise and Intimidate would be APP based skills. Perform and Use Magic Device are still based purely on Charisma, as would Charisma-Based casting and any Class that use Charisma for some purpose.

And Since Dexterity has similar issues, equating both Fine and Gross motor skills, I decided to apply the same fix, splitting DEX into GRO and FIN. Balance, Escape Artist, Hide, Move Silently, Ride, and Tumble are GRO, while Open Lock, Sleight of Hand, and Use Rope are FIN. You'd still get your regular overall DEX score to AC and Reflex saves, where applicable.

So yeah, that's about it, really.

Does this seem broken to anyone? Or would anyone object to playing a game under these rules? I mean, even if you like things the old way, you can still just choose to leave your FOP and APP (Or FIN and GRO) alone, and just play it as normal, so It's not like I'm stepping on anyone's toes here. *shrug*

[Hiro Protagonest]

For fixing charisma, I think you should just allow people to choose whether they use wisdom or charisma score for your will saves, 'cause of force of personality.

Anyway, for your fix, I think you should put diplomacy under appearance, and intimidate under force of personality. Bluff could be in either, probably appearance for the sake of balance.

[Zaydos]

2e's Player's Options: Skills and Powers did something similar for every ability score.

Definitely better for optimization. As it's currently designed FoP is better than App except for some specialized builds where it can be equal or for an Imperious Command using intimidate based build better. GRO is also better than FIN except for on some rogues/factotums which need to pick locks.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Escape artist would go in fine motor skills, rather than gross.

Also, constitution should be split into endurance and toughness. One's for how tires you get, the other's for how tough you are in a fight.

[stainboy]

White Wolf proved for about 15 years that Appearance is a useless stat. And White Wolf has characters roll social checks that matter a lot more often than D&D.

I'd say just completely decouple a character's appearance from stats, which doesn't really change anything.

[The Rose Dragon]

White Wolf proved for about 15 years that Appearance is a useless stat. And White Wolf has characters roll social checks that matter a lot more often than D&D.

Exalted 2nd Edition disagrees with you, where Appearance is considered the god stat of Social Attributes.

[stainboy]

...That would be after my 15 year mark. (Actually when did Exalted 2e come out? I probably should have just said oWoD.)