Appearance as a stat and what Charisma represents: a discussion

[Segev]

Pulling it out of the "worst players" thread because I find the topic of an appearance stat interesting.

It's no longer a "new" thought that Charisma is not appearance, but somehow incorporates it. In D&D, one of the examples given to demonstrate how Charisma need not be appearance is that the Atropol - a rather disturbingly disgusting creature - has Cha around 50. Charisma, while it can incorporate appearance, is more about force of personality (especially in 3e, where it became the "other" arcane casting stat). Even if it comes with an attractive face or body, its power is in how that is used in conjunction with everything else about one's personality to engender desired emotional reactions in others.

Appearance shows up as a stat in some games. In most cases - oWoD and even Exalted amongst them - it seems to be "the higher this is, the prettier you are." Or at least, "more visually pleasing to onlookers." This can get a little wacky when dealing with non-human entities, because it makes beauty objective rather than subjective. Does a sentient horse really find the same thing physically beautiful as an elf? Is a high-appearance horse as attractive as a high-appearance elf? It could be argued that a beautiful sunset and a beautiful woman are not beautiful in the same way and engender different (positive) responses, but still, the point does remain.

Scion, another White Wolf game, was the first one I saw that did something I think is really clever with Appearance: it's not how good you look; it's how well you exploit how you look.

If you're gorgeous, your high appearance lets you use that to twist those of appropriate sexual orientation around your little finger, to turn others green with jealousy, and to make sure they're all dancing to your beat before you even have to open your mouth. If you're ugly, your high appearance ensures that you strike terror or evoke pity or engender disgust when you wish to, rather than at the most inconvenient times. If you're plain, your high appearance lets you fade into the background or allows your personality to shine forth without your appearance being a distraction.

Low appearance ugly people are simply treated poorly until they can change people's minds. They might be frightful or pitiful or disgusting, but they have no control over which reaction they evoke and cannot count on it to be the "right" one for a given situation. Plain people with low appearance are ignored, but not because they fade innocuously away; they are just unable to draw attention when they want it. They remain just as conspicuous and easy to describe as anybody else, but they can't use their appearance to draw or avoid attention, nor can they even come across as "the guy next door" the way a high-appearance plain-looking fellow could. Beautiful people with low appearance draw attention whether they like it or not, and cannot use it to their advantage. Those who lust for them assume they have a right to; those who are jealous are not constrained by it but envigored. They may also, contrary to the high-appearance beautiful person, be assumed to be idiots or fools and just empty-headed. But they cannot guarantee that, as they don't know hwo to pull that look off specifically, either.

Of course, this remains somewhat difficult to differentiate from Charisma. I would suggest, however, that Appearance is about ensuring that your look - whatever it is - engenders the right generic response. Possibly keyed off of archetypes ("The women all want him, and the men want to be him," vs. "The men's jaws drop when she walks in, and the women feel spikes of jealousy at the 'hussy'"), but under the general control of the high-Appearance person. Charisma is about how one's actions - regardless of how one's looks start people off - change or strengthen those initial impressions.

Appearance is about how you look and how that makes people react; how they notice you or not. Charisma is about whether, having noticed you, they are drawn to you or find you dull (or find your commanding presence intimidating to terrifying). Charisma requires action towards people; Appearance merely requires that you know what effect you want to have on any who happen to see you. Perhaps Charisma is also a bit of "social melee range" - you have to be interacting with them (though speeches from a stage can allow mass "interaction" at a distance) - while Appearance is more of a "ranged social attack," simply working because they see you and see how you carry yourself. It might set initial reactions and be useful without having to take specific action, but it won't engender specific responses nor survive alone in direct interaction.

What do you guys think?

[Yora]

Appearance is completely redundant.

Suppose you make Force of Personalty and Appearance two distinct stats. When would you ever add your Appearance score to a dice roll? Is there are single situation, outside of beauty contests, where your Appearance score makes any difference?

[JNAProductions]

First impressions? Disguises? I'm sure there's a few situations.

[JeenLeen]

In general, I agree that Appearance does not make sense as a stat. I prefer how in nWoD it is a merit you can have a few dots of for a low cost (and appropriate impact) instead of an expensive stat that isn't really worth the cost.

I like how Scion handles it, as noted. In Exalted, if your appearance is greater than that of someone you are using mental influence on, they get a penalty to their mental defense to represent the passive effect it has on social circumstances. I think that's a nifty use as well. But, all in all, while it can be used decently well as a stat, I think the system benefits overall if it's not used as a stat.

For D&D and such, I think it's important to stress that appearance can but is not necessarily part of charisma. I would prefer to consider it up to the player how attractive the char is (as long as it's possible for a given race), but have Charisma factor into how they can use their beauty or ugliness to boost persuasion or intimidation. So basically like Scion.

[Geddy2112]

I also agree that appearance, comeliness, physical beauty does not make sense as a stat, and that is does not have much of anything to do with charisma. Sure, some charismatic people are beautiful but others are not. Likewise, some beautiful people are charismatic but others are not. Physical beauty is physical, charisma is not. If anything, how beautiful a character would be would be a reflection of constitution and strength(at least in D&D). However, beauty(physical and inner beauty) is largely a racial and cultural construct. A very handsome dwarf could be considered ugly by an elf. Said elf might find ugly(by dwarven standards) dwarves to be more attractive than handsome(by dwarven standards) dwarves. Force of personality is force of personality, regardless of race or culture.

[Mr.Moron]

Appearance is completely redundant.

Suppose you make Force of Personalty and Appearance two distinct stats. When would you ever add your Appearance score to a dice roll? Is there are single situation, outside of beauty contests, where your Appearance score makes any difference?

Nearly all social interaction checks other than those made for broad organization or with people you have an established relationships.

Assuming you've got the basic competency to not be yammering and incoherent your appearance is the dominate force in how others perceive you what you put forward to them. It's basically the only thing that matters in romantic situations, avoiding or attracting attention, as well as how fairly people treat you in exchanges. Depending on how in-depth you'd want to make your social system it could also be used as part of a sort of passive defensive score whenever others are trying to get folks to act against you, or when someone is determining what they want to do you. For example the primary factor where judges have discretion in sentencing is appearance.

The question is more "When does force of personality count?". Basically when making checks for speeches, commanding people (appearance also counts here), or begging your friends to do something.

[razorback]

It's been a long time, but 1stE and/or 2ndE had comeliness as an optional 7th 'stat'. I think Role Master had Appearance, but I might be confusing it with another system.
If I remember correctly, Comeliness was a stat (appearance) that was modified by Charisma (force of personality). Appearance, on the other hand, was stand alone. I think. More of a RP tool because the DM would look at it and use that to judge others reactions instead of rolling, at least how we played.

So, I think it can have value for a game but there should be some situational modifiers in place. Of course, then you have Diplomancers with a whole other ability to riff off of. The horse/elf analog would have some kind of same race +X/same group (humanoids, for example)-y/no similarity (elf/horse) -z.

I like the idea of 'ranged social attack' but I wonder how it would play out.

[Yora]

Nearly all social interaction checks other than those made for broad organization or with people you have an established relationships.

Assuming you've got the basic competency to not be yammering and incoherent your appearance is the dominate force in how others perceive you what you put forward to them. It's basically the only thing that matters in romantic situations, avoiding or attracting attention, as well as how fairly people treat you in exchanges.

But that's really barely about what nature gave you, but almost entirely about how you present yourself. And that's just regular old Charisma.

[VincentTakeda]

Palladium splits the abilities into beauty and mental affinity. One gives bonuses to trust and intimidation, the other to attempts at charming and impressing. The difference between people you'd like to take a selfie with and the people you'd actually want to hang out with for a while.

[dream]

HERO system allows PCs to attack with Presence, the system's Charisma stat. I think A song of Ice and Fire and Supers also allow players to use their charisma as a weapon against others. Come to think of it, there's several systems that allow the offensive use of charisma, either directly from the stat or from related skills (Diplomacy, Intimidation, Bluff, ect.)

Is Charisma physical or intellectual? Both, IME. Appearance has a huge effect on how we react to people, just as personality can have equal impact.

[ShaneMRoth]

One problem with trying to attach physical beauty to a game mechanic is that standards of physical beauty are subjective. Charisma is abstract enough to allow for it to objectively impact game mechanics.

Charisma includes the ability to overcome personal preferences and personal bias.

For example, a Charismatic brunette woman would be able to turn the head of a man who normally prefers blondes. A Charismatic bald man would be able to turn the head of a woman who prefers men with full heads of hair.

Also, Charisma is understood to be more of a mental attribute than a physical attribute.

Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness.

While a person with a high Charisma is more likely than not to be physically attractive, and a person with a low Charisma is more likely than not to be physically unattractive, it is difficult to parse just exactly how that plays out from one character to the next.

But if a mechanic is to be used, even if for no other reason than for flavor, then it has to be clear what impact that quality will have on game play. Generally, physical attractiveness alone is seldom enough of a factor to come into play. Being merely unattractive is rarely an obstacle to a character's goal, if her Charisma is high enough. And being attractive is unlikely to be a benefit if her Charisma is low enough. So, if the desire to be able to rate a character on a scale from 1 to 20, if it is just fluff (or chrome), then make up a house rule, and make sure it has no bearing meaningful bearing on Charisma checks. Most Charisma penalties that are imposed by spells or curses are actually game penalties that are so severe that a Charisma penalty on Diplomacy checks is very nearly a side effect.

Also, for a physical appearance mechanic to be fair, it has to be subject to circumstance bonuses from such things as the Disguise skill, the Alter Self spell, and the like.

Note: I'm talking about D&D mechanics in particular, as that is the frame of reference with which I am most familiar.

[Steampunkette]

Mostly useless and pointless unless you're using a system that specifically accounts for it or (even better) uses it as a core mechanic.

Adding Attractiveness or comeliness to D&D, for example, wouldn't do much of anything for it except give most players another dump stat and an extra stat roll.

In order to use Attractiveness effectively you'd need to develop systems, or subsystems, which specifically use it to a degree that players view it as important, or at least relevant, to the game's mechanics and story.

[Kriton]

First impressions? Disguises? I'm sure there's a few situations.

If anything, high appearance should penalize disguises.

[Psyren]

Usually when this topic comes up, folks demonstrate the lack of correlation by showcasing all the hideous creatures that have massive Cha values, e.g. Phaerimm (25 Cha and utterly repulsive) or the Atropal mentioned in the OP.

The last time I saw this topic crop up, I took it a step further, and went looking for low-Cha creatures that would be considered conventionally attractive. I was able to find several:

They're almost uncorrelated. I say "almost" because examples of conventionally attractive creatures with low Cha are rare - artists tend to, consciously or unconsciously, add "ugly" to creatures if the style guide tells them they'll have low Cha, or be a typically low-Cha type, like a monstrous humanoid.

Having said that, there are examples in both directions where Cha does not correspond to attractiveness. The "ugly with high Cha" examples abound (just look at the Atropal, with its 42 Charisma) but the low-Cha yet conventionally attractive examples are a bit harder to find. They are there though:

9 Charisma
10 Charisma
11 Charisma
13 Charisma

Actually, that last one raises an interesting point - in addition to "beauty" we have other forms of physical endearment, like "cuteness." A lot of animals fall into that category (particularly babies), but they have notoriously low Charisma. Are they physically unappealing?

[Wardog]

If anything, high appearance should penalize disguises.

Low probably should as well. The further you are from average, the more recognisable you would be, and the harder it would be to cover it up.

[Hawkstar]

Mostly useless and pointless unless you're using a system that specifically accounts for it or (even better) uses it as a core mechanic.

Adding Attractiveness or comeliness to D&D, for example, wouldn't do much of anything for it except give most players another dump stat and an extra stat roll.

Worse - it would actively punish those who do care if their character looks good or not.

[ShaneMRoth]

If anything, high appearance should penalize disguises.

Low probably should as well. The further you are from average, the more recognisable you would be, and the harder it would be to cover it up.

What I meant was that a person should be able to raise or reduce their base Attractiveness, or Comeliness, or Hotness or whatnot ability rating with the Disguise skill and the Alter Self skill. They still look like themselves, but they look better or worse.

[Thrudd]

I feel like appearance/physical attractiveness is something that doesn't need to be, and probably shouldn't be, mechanically represented. Perceptions of beauty being relative to the observer and the culture, you would need at the very least a table of modifiers to represent the general tastes in beauty of the various races. The important functions of charisma in D&D, which are leadership and social grace, do not require physical attractiveness. Nor does a lack of these abilities necessitate being ugly, a handsome person can be a terrible leader and socially awkward. In 3e, the new function of charisma as a "force of personality" tied to magic likewise doesn't equate to beauty in any way.
I prefer to let the player define their character's appearance however they choose. It will not have any mechanical effect. The game simply won't revolve around situations where a character's physical/sexual attractiveness is much of a factor.

In a game where you intend for sexual situations and seduction to arise and want them to be mechanically adjudicated, it might make sense to use an appearance/comeliness score, separate from charisma. Again, if there are different races/species involved, this score will need to be modified according to the racial/sexual preference of the observer. Maybe the appearance score would contribute an additional modifier to certain social interactions, in addition to charisma. Or add/subtract from the difficulty of the roll.

Example: a human male with high comeliness wants to seduce a heterosexual human female to get her to let him into the temple. His full comeliness modifier applies to the roll.
The same human male tries the same thing but this time on a female Orc. depending on how the DM views orcs, he might get full bonus, reduced bonus, or no bonus depending on whether orcs thinks humans are "icky" or not.
One more example: our handsome man tries again, this time on a male heterosexual dwarf. His comeliness bonus might turn into a penalty for this case, again depending on how the DM envisions Dwarf culture and perceptions.

The main takeaway here, is attractiveness has variables that would need to be addressed to be represented fairly in the game. You'd need to define not only inter-racial perceptions of attractiveness and sexuality but also the sexual orientation of each NPC. In a game with sexual content, that would be a reasonable thing to expect, I suppose.
In general, I prefer just letting charisma serve the function of modifying social interaction. If the interaction is between a sexually compatible pair, we could possibly describe the interaction as having a physical attraction element, but it will only be "fluff". I don't like the AD&D Unearthed Arcana comeliness, that gives people with really high scores mechanical fascination and charm abilities for the opposite sex.

[Grek]

For me, Constitution = Appearance. If you need to know specifically how good someone looks, check their Con score. Low con means you are fat/sickly/deformed; high con means you are fit/healthy/well put together.

[Bard1cKnowledge]

Charisma, it makes the difference between "Oh hey, it's this guy!" And "oh hey it's this guy."

[Seto]

Charisma, it makes the difference between "Oh hey, it's this guy!" And "oh hey it's this guy."

I find that hilarious, may I sig ?

Yeah, low appearance = ugly and low Charisma = bland. There's quite a difference there. I think beauty (however subjective, and that's the main problem) is one of the ways high Charisma can manifest, but certainly not the only way. Appearance represents something you are and Charisma represents something you can do. Appearance is hardware and Charisma is software.
I treat mental stats as follows : Wisdom deals with what your mind receives from the world, Intelligence deals with what happens strictly inside your mind, Charisma deals with what the world receives from your mind.
This requires that the use of Charisma is intentional. Being beautiful is not charisma, but knowing how to use your appearance to make others listen to you damn well is. High Charisma means you're memorable and people take notice of your presence. But there are many possible reasons for that : people take notice of beautiful people, but also of funny people, of great orators, of frightening people... A dragon's frightful presence is based on Charisma. A Monstrous Spider, although frightening to most people, is not charismatic because it does not have a mind with which to intentionally impose its presence on the world.

As an aside, about Appearance : the main trouble, as mentioned a lot, is the relativity of cultural beauty norms. But D&D makes us believe that Good and Evil are universal and objective. Good and Evil, for God's sake. If Appearance is important in the game, I'd have no trouble suspending my disbelief to accept that Beauty is a metaphysical presence and transcends cultural differences (kind of like the effect Galadriel has on Gimli in LotR).

[Storm_Of_Snow]

It's been a long time, but 1stE and/or 2ndE had comeliness as an optional 7th 'stat'.

It appeared in 1st edition Unearthed Arcana. Don't know about 2nd edition.

For me, Constitution = Appearance. If you need to know specifically how good someone looks, check their Con score. Low con means you are fat/sickly/deformed; high con means you are fit/healthy/well put together.

I'd disagree to an extent - some people may be good looking but sickly, others may be very fit and/or hardy, but, to pull a line from Old Harry's Game, look like the back end of a bus. That's been hit by another bus.

And that's before we get into cultural opinions of what's considered good looking.

I agree with an earlier point - where in an RPG does someone's pure attractiveness or otherwise make a difference?

[DigoDragon]

GURPS 4e has appearance as an optional advantage/disadvantage you can buy in levels to modify social interactions. Even has a "cute" option if you're playing a fuzzy critter and a mod that allows your beauty to work on species other than your own. I think that works better than as a stat. My old group rarely cared to use it however, so for us character appearances didn't matter much.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

For me, Constitution = Appearance. If you need to know specifically how good someone looks, check their Con score. Low con means you are fat/sickly/deformed; high con means you are fit/healthy/well put together.

But you could make a similar argument for strength (how muscular they are) and dexterity (how lean they are maybe? Up to some point? Hard to pin down...)

I think this could be funny to try on a character ones, pinning down their "type" (as far as looks go) by base stats, do they fall for healthy, muscular, sportive or handsome looking people? (I'd love to be able to expand this further, but I have no idea how wisdom or intelligence would look.)

Face characters have a high charisma and are often handsome in some way (sure, it's only part of the story of being charismatic, but it helps), but that may not translate to "smoking hot" in every way, or for every spectator.

On a similar note, I've always found it kind of weird how intimidation runs on charisma. It definitely has to do with force of personality, but it's that force applied in completely the opposite direction of most of what that stat does. If Face from the A-team needs to intimidate someone he tags in B.A., or maybe even Hannibal (or Murdock, I bet he'd be pretty good at it if he was sent in without knowing he was supposed to intimidate someone). I definitely wouldn't argue for the inclusion of a new base stat just for the purpose of intimidation (okay, for this skill you add your charisma bonus to your comeliness penalty), but if we're comparing these games to reality anyway...

[Kriton]

What I meant was that a person should be able to raise or reduce their base Attractiveness, or Comeliness, or Hotness or whatnot ability rating with the Disguise skill and the Alter Self skill. They still look like themselves, but they look better or worse.

Yes that makes sense. The question is whether attractiveness would make any difference mechanically. It certainly should matter RP-wise.

[Bard1cKnowledge]

I find that hilarious, may I sig ?

You may sig, and make t-shirts

[goto124]

For most of us, Appearance is just fluff- we like to imagine that our high-Cha characters are attractive, or at least good-looking.

Divorce Charisma from any specific appearance, or set of attributes, and let the players imagine what their char looks like.

[Segev]

It is, of course, easy to say, "you're as good or bad looking as you want; how you use or overcome it with your personality is Charisma," and just ignore any mechanical Appearance.

What I was hoping for has happened in a few posts in here, though: what, if you HAVE an Appearance stat in some hypothetical game (probably not D&D), would it do?

If you need a mechanical system to tie it to, Scion or Exalted work. However, I'm mostly looking for discussion of what the distinction is. What situations would one be used in, and what situations would another?

How would "high appearance, low charisma" be used to one's advantage (e.g. how would one downplay the fingernails-on-blackboard personality while taking advantage of appearance)? How would the other way around be played to advantage (e.g. how would one use force of personality/personal likability/ability to evoke exploitable pity to overcome a hideous, repulsive look)?

Could a social system be designed to use both in fitting ways that are not basically the same thing? Might one be "social strength" and the other "social dexterity," for example? (Her beauty means that, if her personality "hits" you, it hits like a ton of bricks, but her lack of personality means she isn't going to "hit" you very often?) Would some other analogy, or some less-directly-related-to-physical-combat-engine system be better? What might that look like?

[Thrudd]

It is, of course, easy to say, "you're as good or bad looking as you want; how you use or overcome it with your personality is Charisma," and just ignore any mechanical Appearance.

What I was hoping for has happened in a few posts in here, though: what, if you HAVE an Appearance stat in some hypothetical game (probably not D&D), would it do?

If you need a mechanical system to tie it to, Scion or Exalted work. However, I'm mostly looking for discussion of what the distinction is. What situations would one be used in, and what situations would another?

How would "high appearance, low charisma" be used to one's advantage (e.g. how would one downplay the fingernails-on-blackboard personality while taking advantage of appearance)? How would the other way around be played to advantage (e.g. how would one use force of personality/personal likability/ability to evoke exploitable pity to overcome a hideous, repulsive look)?

Could a social system be designed to use both in fitting ways that are not basically the same thing? Might one be "social strength" and the other "social dexterity," for example? (Her beauty means that, if her personality "hits" you, it hits like a ton of bricks, but her lack of personality means she isn't going to "hit" you very often?) Would some other analogy, or some less-directly-related-to-physical-combat-engine system be better? What might that look like?

It should be a modifier that can apply to appropriate situations, as determined by the GM.

The way physical appearance affects people is in first impressions, before there is any social interaction. When you approach an NPC, there should be a roll to determine their initial reaction/impression of your character. A good result will set a lower difficulty for subsequent social interaction, and a poor result will increase the difficulty. Your appearance modifier applies to this initial reaction roll, so a very beautiful person will find people easier to convince or manipulate or be willing to be friendly. An ugly person will find more people unwilling to talk and being generally apathetic to hostile. A really good charisma could overcome this, but they will be starting from disadvantage.
In certain situations, an appearance modifier could be applied to other rolls as well. A poor/ugly appearance might actually help if you are attempting to scare someone or intimidate them physically, so the GM might have your negative appearance score apply as a positive in that case.

[Joe the Rat]

But you could make a similar argument for strength (how muscular they are) and dexterity (how lean they are maybe? Up to some point? Hard to pin down...)

I think this could be funny to try on a character ones, pinning down their "type" (as far as looks go) by base stats, do they fall for healthy, muscular, sportive or handsome looking people? (I'd love to be able to expand this further, but I have no idea how wisdom or intelligence would look.)

I've actually used this to decide which PCs a given NPC "admirer" would be interested in. Sum two stats, and use a third stat (Charisma, if it's not one of the two) or other preferences (hair color, social standing, race, size...) to break ties. And then figure out what sort of admirer would be most abhorrent to that player. Because I'm evil.

The diplomat likes them big and beefy: High Strength, High Con.
The socialite likes social graces, and the ability to dance: High charisma, high dexterity (or dancing skill)
The barmaid really appreciates a good listener (Wisdom), and has a penchant for dwarves.

That sort of thing.