Appearance! Huh! What is it good for?

[Persell]

while the people speaking for appearance as attribute think it is about how you carry yourself.

I assume that, as you haven't said otherwise you (and others who defend Appearance) argue that Appearance is all fine and well as it stands in canon. I feel I have to bring the attention back to canon then.


"APPEARANCE


   Appearance is a combination of physical attractiveness and innate appeal. It is your character's ability to make a good first impression or simply to generate an instinctive response in others."


x         Poor: people suppress a cringe when they see you.


xx       Average: Just that - another face in the crowd.


xxx     Good: Local villagers squabble for your affections.


xxxx   Exceptional: A celebrated beauty, even in the imperial court.


xxxxx Superb: Rural folk mistake you for an incarnate deity."


In the second edition the wording has been changed a little.


"APPEARANCE


   Appearance is a combination of overall physical attractiveness, how your character carries herself and her typical degree of grooming. It covers her ability to make a good first impression and to generate an instinctive response in others.


   Trait Effects: Someone with appearance 1 is either very plain or downright ugly. Someone with Appearance 3 is quite good-looking - many people look at him when he walks down the street. someone with appearance 5 is likely the most attractive and desirous individual most people have ever met - even the most jaded sovereigns turn their heads when he enters the room."


So Appearance is not how you carry yourself. It is also that, but combined with physical attractiveness - in other words, the symmetry and proportions of your body. Features that can't be trained. This is what we are arguing against. If you think that Appearance should only cover how a person carries himself and not the symmetry of his features we agree. This is namely Composure.

 

[Persell]

You can't go to university and suddenly be smarter than Einstein or Stephen Hawking just by doing more degrees than he has.  Also, some people are just naturally stronger and more adept at lifting things and such, so, whilst you might be able to work out and become stronger than them, I'd put it down as a pretty good bet that if said other person decided to get into weightlifting and working out as well, he'd quickly outmatch you.  Some people are just BETTER at things than others.

Sure the problem applies somewhat to all the attributes. But I feel it is extreme in the case of Appearance. Lifting weights once or twice a week would maybe raise Strength from 1 to 2. And what it does is it is changing the structure of your muscels. They can now perform a little bit more than before. This is a true change of the attribute. I think it is possible to change the capacity for memory, learning and analytical capability by using your brain for those things.

So, in the same vain, if a person puts that much more effort into their appearance, spending all day carefully applying make-up, putting their hair JUST right, putting on the right perfumes and the like, then I think it's ENTIRELY possible to "train" your appearance higher.  It represents the character getting better at maintaining a high standard of appearance, just as Strength is a character learning how to STAY strong, not just to build up the muscle.

This has been covered. No matter the amount of make-up you apply and the skill with which you apply it, if you nose is too big for your face it won't get smaller, if your nose is crooked it won't straighten out. You would be hiding your Appearance, not training it. It would not change.

 

[Jeppe]

You can't go to university and suddenly be smarter than Einstein or Stephen Hawking just by doing more degrees than he has.

I agree. But you will be smarter than you were before you attended school. You don't have to max out your intelligence to become smarter. You just have to improve it relative to what it once was.

Also, some people are just naturally stronger and more adept at lifting things and such, so, whilst you might be able to work out and become stronger than them, I'd put it down as a pretty good bet that if said other person decided to get into weightlifting and working out as well, he'd quickly outmatch you.  Some people are just BETTER at things than others.

Again, I agree. But remember that we are talking about exalted people here. They are talented at everything, something which is reflected in their training times being significantly lower than mortals'.

Also, whilst raising strength may seem obvious, I don't think reaching the ultimate pinacle of legendary strength (apparently Str 5 ) can be done simply by going down the gym once a week.  Your character should be working out for years to get to that level of strength and to keep it up.

I agree. Being among the top 100 in Creation at any single thing should require some kind of training upkeep.

So in the same vain, if a person puts that much more effort into their appearance, spending all day carefully applying make-up, putting their hair JUST right, putting on the right perfumes and the like, then I think it's ENTIRELY possible to "train" your appearance higher.  It represents the character getting better at maintaining a high standard of appearance, just as Strength is a character learning how to STAY strong, not just to build up the muscle.

This is were we disagree. While the 5th dot, in my opinion, should require constant upkeep, average and above average levels of attributes should not. Take a military campaign, for instance. On this campaign all attributes would not require any kind of upkeep. You are still strong, nimble, and enduring. You still talk to your friends and exercise a minimum of wit, intelligence, and perception. Even manipulation and charisma are maintained by their meager everyday use. But to have even increased your appearance by a single dot would require you to spend time each and every day to shave, do your hair, wash your clothes, etc., not to mention the resource cost. This is time (and possibly resources) you do not have available in a military campaign. Does that mean that you effectivley loose your appearance dots untill you get the time to dress up again?


Furthermore, I do not think that you can become THAT good at applying make-up, picking out clothes, or doing your hair. If you have an average appearance, no amount of make-up or designer-clothes will put you in league with a naturally beautiful person in the same garments.


I will refrain from repeating myself consercening the resource requirements for maintaining such a standard of comliness.


Jeppe

 

[Samiel]

For simplicity's sake, I'd simply assume in awkward situations involving appearance that one simply becomes prettier/more handsome, and lay the cause at the feet of growth or maturation, or mild honing of the physical form of the exalt due to continued use of carefully shaped essence, or the favour of a god.


Alternatively, maybe it's like Fable: Your appearance changes subtly with your deeds, so a true paragon hero can optionally simply become more dashing and handsome. Should he later become an evil bastard, he could say he is just as impressive, but also imposing or scary.


Ultimately, there are holes in the system. If you want a perfect representation, go outside and run around for a while. The physics engine is awesome. But if you want in-game excuses for attribute upping, just be creative if one doesn't readily spring to mind.


As to maintainance, I'd leave that with the players. If someone wants to accentuate the strength and prowess of their character by having him excercise every morning with giant rocks, more power to him/her. Otherwise, the attributes are probably maintained by virtue of the exalted essence within.

 

[Jukashi]

It seems to me that talk of shaving, groomin, composure and so on brings this more into the realm of a skill than an attribute. Appearance is more a function of pure, innate physical aesthetics, and if you don't have the skills to go with it- bam, that's where your untrained -2 to dice pools comes in.


As for training Appearance, well, when has anyone ever trained Appearance? In Exalted, there's probably ways to explain it- an inner radiance afforded by improved confidence, a long program of Lunar shapeshifting, or the gift of the god you pray to. Normal people are limited to what they were born with, yes, but they're pretty limited in their other areas too.


Training stuff is for skills. I'd house-rule in that apart from Lunars or maybe Alchemicals, Attributes can only be raised with bonus points, and after that you're limited to learning skills. Want to lift big rocks? Athletics. Get people to like you? Presence. Figure out what people are up to? Awareness or Investigation.

 

[Kajata]

Hmm... I can see what you're saying in that attributes represent natural ability, so it's not like you can "learn" them, per se, but doing a lot of running does two things.


1) It teaches you HOW to run.  How to breath while you're doing it so you don't get so out of breath, how to place your feet properly, how fast you should go to keep running for a certain distance and the like.


2) It builds your muscles.  I know this myself, because I've started running recently and it's happened to me.  Sure, you don't suddenly go "hya!" and there ya go, I'm twice as strong as I was before, but a) this is Exalted, so it's not really bound by the laws of our reality b) you do gradually increase in strength.


I know that you're saying abilities are learned and attributes are just THERE, but they do increase.  If you lift weights, you can hit harder, as well as lift bigger things.  If you do gymnastics, you can dodge things easier, as well as walk along a tightrope.  If you study law, you learn specific knowledge but you also increase your analytical skills.  You have to have attributes because doing one thing frequently makes you better at something only loosely linked (ie. using the same muscles).

 

[Silence In Daylight]

An old GM of mine once gave me this excuse for improving abilities in any system: the assumption that the characters are not currently living up to their potential.


 Your generic Exalt? Capable of being a superhuman 5 in every Attribute, but just not bothering to. Once she does, the mystical/magical forces surrounding her enable her to reach the next level of her potential.


 Is this a good excuse? Not really. But if it helps you to sleep at night, why not?

 

[Jakk Bey]

I can get stronger with a bit of work.


I can get quicker of foot with a little work.


I can certainly improve my stamina with a little work.


I can improve my memory with a little work.


I can improve my mental acuity with a little work.


I can train and hone my perceptions with a little work.


If Appearance bothers you, then what about Manipulation?  Charisma?  Do you suddenly become more likeable naturally?  Or do you learn which buttons to push, how to empathize?   How about Perception?  Do you just suddenly become more aware of your surroundings, or do you train yourself to notice things?  The idea that you can blend areas that by proper definition should be skills--and that includes Awareness, Athletics,  and any of the Social Attributes--is a problem of the mechanics of the game.  It is attempting to address mechanics for a game, not be a definition of how things work in real life.


By all accounts, when you improve any Social Attribute, you are just learning how to use your faculties, you are using skills.  You have learned which buttons to push on people.  You have learned how to make people like you.  You have learned how to carry yourself in such a manner, and make yourself appealing to their eyes.  All of the Social Attributes are essentially skills, not naturally occurring.  Some folks are more likable than others.  They smell right, their personalities mesh with yours.  The same things that cause you to like them, can cause others to instantly take a dislike.  


So how do you fix it?  Abolish the Social Attributes entirely?  Base everything off Mental, which by this sort of reasoning, you should--and make all the Social Attributes into Abilities that can be trained and improved as such.  Charisma and Manipulation both are trained, as any charleton trained at Bob Jones University could attest to.  Charisma and Manipulation both are just applications of Perception and Intelligence, with a dose of Wits to tweak the mix.  You see folks, you watch them, you predict how they'll jump, and what makes them do so.  


But that's not how the system works.  It's based on a balance of Attributes to base off rolls.  It's not a perfect mirror of what happens in real life--and to be honest, if Appearance in 2nd Edition is based wholly on physical beauty, rather than that undefinable quality of attraction, then I'll probably ditch it, because I don't buy it, but that's me.


It's a balance to make rolls from.  You want to ditch Appearance for something else, fine--it's just a mechanic.  I think that an Attribute for how well you come off without opening your yap is a good one.  And the idea of basing the Appearance Attribute as to how destinctive you appear, good or ill, isn't a bad one.  The Aberrant definition is almost word for word the same as the BWB--the ability to generate an instinctive response.  The higher up you go, the more of an impression you give.  


And in that vein, you can have someone who is an ugly duckling--like how many teen movies--who isn't all that attractive, who learns how to do her hair, toss off her glasses, and how to dress to impress, and suddenly she's the belle of the ball--or in the case of the geeky boy, he takes off his glasses, throws a little gel in his hair, puts on the well cut jacket, and suddenly, he's the It boy.


It's traditional to have these sorts of transformation tales.  


Is it realistic?  Neither is a man toting around a seven foot flaming sword and leaping from tall trees in a single bound...