Previously in this space I've spoken about my conception of CON and CHA in old-style games. Constitution shows generally how healthy you are and Charisma shows how effective you are at communicating.
One thing that I specifically reject about CHA is that it reflects physical beauty (despite what Gary would say and later authors would almost unanimously echo during the TSR era.) Charisma only talks about persuasion and leadership capacity, not about whether someone is handsome or not.
But what stat does, if it isn't Charisma?
For a long time I thought physical appearance was largely divorced from stats. Maybe you could say that Strength has some bearing on your size, but maybe not (Hobbits can have a STR of 17 after all.) Outside of that, there's little in the stats to inform what you look like.
That's okay, by the way.
But upon looking around in the real world, I can see healthier people are more physically attractive, all other things being equal. We tend to prefer the strong horse to the weak one, for instance, or youth over agedness. Again, all other things being equal.
Therefore, it struck me that CON may be the stat which best maps to physical beauty. Not completely by any means, but to some great degree.
What do you think? Is CON the physical beauty stat?
It could be a combination of CON & CHA. Plus if you do the roll for height and weight then again weight doesn't mean fat and skinning as you can weight a good amount when you are very muscular as well. However I am rambling at this point. You may be onto something with CON.
ReplyDeleteI think that’s a good take on it too. Thanks for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteGlad to share it. Also another thing to think about is it is all in the eye of the players & DM. If I create a character with a low CHA I may take that to not mean the character is ugly but just awkward when having to deal with others in a social interaction or just really bad in public speaking and bartering. Where someone else might say their half-orc with low Charisma is ugliness and scars upon their being. Just tossing in that extra two coppers worth.
DeleteIn the old AD&D Oriental Adventures there was Comeliness. It was modified by Charisma and could see using Constitution as the modifier as well.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t remember it was modified by CON, how interesting! I guess there really is nothing new!
ReplyDeleteInteresting idea, I hadn't really thought of it that way. Here's an idea, it's rather gamey and doesn't always follow reason, but whatever: it's also generally known that people almost always prefer symmetry and internal similarity of features, so physical appearance can be determined by how similar your six ability scores are (or just your physical scores, if you like). If you have all 3s, all 9s, or all 18s, then you're absolutely beautiful; if you have an 18 and a 3, you are absolutely not.
ReplyDeleteOh, what a marvelous idea! I agree it's gamey, but I'm really not all that against gamist hacks so long as they're cool. That's really interesting, thanks.
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