Constitution vs Charisma


Gamer Life General Discussion

51 to 86 of 86 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>
Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
Adrian Parker 563 wrote:
Charisma, given it's description and the skills for which it is the base, is clear meant to be attractiveness (as well as leadership ability, force of personality, etc).

Then this being a 17 Charisma makes no sense.

Appearance does not equal attractiveness.


Kahel Stormbender wrote:


There's this old episode of The Outer Limits, I think. In it there's a woman who's just undergone facial reconstructive surgery, her last chance to be made beautiful before being exiled. The last several attempts had failed after all. Throughout the entire episode you never see the faces of anyone. Then at the end they remove the bandages, and the woman is drop dead gorgeous. She looks in the mirror, and is horrified. At which point the camera pans out, and you see everyone else has pig snouts and is ugly.

Just have to say, it was the Twilight Zone, and it was Eye of the Beholder! Y'know, just in case people want to find it (ideally the original).

Though you were correct about how awesome it is :D
Really great episode, before they took Rob Sterling's soul away from him.


A characters appearance is solely a decision of the player. Ability scores can play any part in appearance that the player chooses, but there is no chart to determine it. It's like choosing what model or color of car to drive. While I think a silver late-model convertible Mustang is sleek and stylish, someone else might find it uninspired and without substance. Plus, it's a fantasy RPG game. A player should be able to choose if the PC is stunning, gruesome, or anything in between.


Anyway i have to leave , so i will make a last post in hopes we can understand each other.

Like others here said , looks are mostly fluff. Pathfinder is a numbers game and having looks arent going to get you anything if you cant make the roll.

What this mean?

Lets say we change looks from CHA to CON and the fighter with his CON 18 says he is the hottest ever , which would be something expected , fine.

Then said human fighter tries to seduce the barmaid , said fighter would roll either a CHA check, diplomacy or bluff. Simple because social interactions are directly related to CHA , which means , he would get a great +0 for his looks at all times during this interaction , since CON doesnt help you on CHA checks.

Does this matter?

Not really , how your PC looks are fluff , but to me it makes much more sense to have everything social relate to CHA , since when the numbers come around , that is what will count.


Just adding weight to the entire "Attractiveness is completely unrelated to Constitution" argument. Standards of beauty vary widely. At various points very pale, thin people have been acclaimed as beauty - waif-like, or etherially beautiful. These people would have terrible Con scores. Similarly, modern supermodels are likely to have average Con.

On the other end of the spectrum, as has been asserted, robust and vigorous people are at times seen as the epitope of attractiveness. However many people (of any gender) who would have ridiculously high Constitution scores - Endurance athletes, Rugby players, Polar explorers or Mountaineers - are often not conventionally attractive.

So

Charisma is defined as the Stat that governs attractiveness. But this is a necessarily simplification for game reasons. Constitution seems entirely unrelated to attractiveness in any example given so far.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Charisma (Cha)

Charisma measures a character's personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and []b]appearance.[/b] It is the most important ability for paladins, sorcerers, and bards. It is also important for clerics, since it affects their ability to channel energy. For undead creatures, Charisma is a measure of their unnatural "lifeforce." Every creature has a Charisma score. A character with a Charisma score of 0 is not able to exert himself in any way and is unconscious.

Notice the exact wording on the description of charisma. Nowhere in the description does it mention attractiveness, beauty or comeliness, it simply says appearance. There is no reason a character with a high CHA could not have a monstrous appearance. IF CHA is based on attractiveness then why do undead use it in place of CON. I can’t think of anything less attractive then a dead rotting body but most undead have decent CHA.


Mysterious Stranger wrote:
For undead creatures, Charisma is a measure of their unnatural "lifeforce.

Undead have their own special definition for charisma. Hags are a better example of a high charisma, not traditionally attractive critter.

Although I'm in the camp that can't see the correlation between constitution and appearance.

Constitution is toughness, endurance, stamina. None of which speak to me necessarily of slimness (which, lets face it, is what you are talking about here). Strength and dexterity are for me better examples for athleticism.

Physical attractiveness is not just physical fitness. You can be slim without being fit.

If you really dislike charisma as a sole measure of appearance an average of charisma and every physical ability score would be as close as you'll get.


The really weird part about tying attractiveness to a stat (regardless of which stat it is) is that it turns something which is purely a matter of opinion in the real world into an objective, numeric quantity. There can be no disagreements as to who is more attractive than who, or specific qualities that only some people find attractive. Instead, virtually everyone agrees that someone with a 16 in the relevant stat is more attractive than someone with a 15, and any two people with a 16 in the attractiveness stat are exactly as attractive in as each other (regardless of who you ask to judge their 'attractiveness').
At which point, you've separated your in-game 'attractiveness' pretty far from how people think of the notion of attractiveness outside of the game.


Kahel Stormbender wrote:
FDR wasn't particularly good looking either, although neither was he ugly. But he was a very charismatic man.

He also had a terrible con score.

What? He died in office. It is fair enough to say. No this isn't about a failed save against disease. ...not entirely...

Just saying- Teddy had a freakin' great con score. He entered into office while climbing a mountain as vice pres. He went on all sorts of trips and expeditions. Hell, he got SHOT and still did his speech. It takes more than that to kill a bull moose. And apparently his stenographer had a great CMB, since he put the shooter into a half nelson. So the first Roosevelt administration and offices were made up entirely out of martial characters, apparently.

Dark Archive

Corvino wrote:
Just adding weight to the entire "Attractiveness is completely unrelated to Constitution" argument. Standards of beauty vary widely. At various points very pale, thin people have been acclaimed as beauty - waif-like, or etherially beautiful.

As a side note related to this... Back in the 1800's Sears use to sell arsenic as a health and beauty aid. Women took it to get that "beautiful and healthy pale, translucent skin". No, seriously. My dad has a copy of on one of their catalogs from the late 1800's.

Women took poison by choice to look more beautiful. Nobody's going to accuse someone who's taking poison and making it difficult to breath by squeezing their internal organs of being exceptionally healthy.

Even more proof that beauty isn't connected to constitution.


Even if we go with the fit people as beautiful thing, surely str would make at least as much sense as con.


I hear 18 Con has an 8 pack, that he is shredded.


Also: Its almost like you can't summarize a human in 6 overarching stats ranging (generally) from 8 to 18.

It's almost like this is a game, or a simulation.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Adrian's entire premise is based on a Begging the Question fallacy. He assumes that Charisma measures from low values being ugly to high values being beautiful and, from there, uses the existence of ugly, but high-Charisma monsters to demonstrate that Charisma shouldn't be the basis of the "ugly to beautiful" measurement. But he has no realistic basis for that initial premise, as most of us have demonstrated, but he cannot accept that explanation because that collapses his entire argument. In other words, he doesn't want to be correct and is not presenting his argument in earnest but, rather, for the sake of argument and contention because he wants people to pay attention to him for the purpose of shallow self-validation. In other words, he should go back under his bridge and regenerate.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

#569597045484


Kazaan wrote:
Adrian's entire premise is based on a Begging the Question fallacy. He assumes that Charisma measures from low values being ugly to high values being beautiful and, from there, uses the existence of ugly, but high-Charisma monsters to demonstrate that Charisma shouldn't be the basis of the "ugly to beautiful" measurement. But he has no realistic basis for that initial premise, as most of us have demonstrated, but he cannot accept that explanation because that collapses his entire argument. In other words, he doesn't want to be correct and is not presenting his argument in earnest but, rather, for the sake of argument and contention because he wants people to pay attention to him for the purpose of shallow self-validation. In other words, he should go back under his bridge and regenerate.

Reading further into this thread - I think you're right. Multiple times saying "Did you read my post" is the clear indicator.

Community & Digital Content Director

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Removed a series of posts and locking. Please take a look over our Community Guidelines. I'm not wholly convinced that this discussion is particularly productive and appears to have gone in circles. General statements about real-world health, marketing, and perceived attractiveness don't exactly translate into what exists in a game (especially one that is played in many different ways by different people). These topics in particular are widely contested in the real world and in themselves can be hot button issues. Also consider that we host a community that includes a variety of people of various backgrounds, and that certain blanket statements can be viewed as fairly offensive.

51 to 86 of 86 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Gamer Life / General Discussion / Constitution vs Charisma All Messageboards
Recent threads in General Discussion