Appearances

[Haku1]

How would you go about describing someone whose appearance is over 5?


After all, appearance 5 tends to get you mistaken for a god incarnate. And you typically get Feys as well as spirits, elementals and demons in the range of 5+.

 

[Joseph]

How would you go about describing someone whose appearance is over 5?
After all, appearance 5 tends to get you mistaken for a god incarnate. And you typically get Feys as well as spirits, elementals and demons in the range of 5+.

Nothing you can possibly say about someone over appearance 5 will avoid being trite, stupid, or cliche while STILL doing them justice.


Appearance doesn't make sense as a statistic anyway, particularly not one you can raise with experience.  I've heard people attempt to justify it by saying things like "Oh, you learn to take better care of yourself and dress yourself up nicer," and to that I say bullshit.  Things you "learn to do" are Abilities, not Attributes.  Wearing makeup wouldn't raise your Appearance Attribute, it would just give you a bonus die or two to Appearance related pools, just as glasses give you a bonus to Perception related pools of certain varieties, NOT additional actual Perception.


In conclusion: don't worry about it, it's stupid, nonsensical, and lame.

 

[psychoph]

I would say once you hit appearance 5 you are hitting ideals.  


I would also disagree with Joseph to a point.  I would say you can raise your apperance through experience.  I would say a case in point would be me.  I am working to lose fat percentage by eating right, and going to the gym.  By certain standards if i were to lose the 20% body fat i have and drop to single digits, which is possible through a lot of hard work, I would be physically more apealing to someone.  My face would have lost weight and become more defined, my muscles would have enlarged, and other health aspects will have improved as I will have a more stable dietary process.  


Other examples coudl be taking drugs to get rid of acme or topical creams, which when rtemoving skin blemishes cause you to become more attractive.


In this day and age cosmetic seurgery also does the trick, but imo that isn't really experience based.

 

[Joseph]

I would also disagree with Joseph to a point.  I would say you can raise your apperance through experience.  I would say a case in point would be me.  I am working to lose fat percentage by eating right, and going to the gym.  

I find plump people more attractive, you'd be LOSING Appearance in my eyes via your XP expenditures.


Further, losing weight once you HAVE been large tends to leave saggy skin; people often do NOT look prettier in even the television-media sense after they've lost a lot of weight the way you're referring to.


Further, if you're all ready fairly muscular but still ugly, how is this going to help?  You can't just bring up situational examples, spending XP to gain Appearance is something ANYONE can do.  


I think my case is clear.

 By certain standards if i were to lose the 20% body fat i have and drop to single digits, which is possible through a lot of hard work, I would be physically more apealing to someone.  

And you may well be physically LESS appealing to others, so what?

 My face would have lost weight and become more defined, my muscles would have enlarged, and other health aspects will have improved as I will have a more stable dietary process.  

And you're assuming inanely that that would automatically ensure you were better looking.

 Other examples coudl be taking drugs to get rid of acme or topical creams, which when rtemoving skin blemishes cause you to become more attractive.

The emails you get might be trying to convince you this is true, but it's not.

 In this day and age cosmetic seurgery also does the trick, but imo that isn't really experience based.

I agree; the ONE thing that could in THEORY reliably increase your Appearance rating (the aforementioned surgery) simply isn't related to XP at all.


I don't think you've countered my point, honestly.

 

[Joseph]

Remember, Appearance 1 (for instance) is rarely "you're a bit fat" or something, it's "you're a fucking leper with scars and what have you."


I don't think any amount of adventuring will result in you becoming prettier, sans magic of some variety (which is, again, not exactly XP related).


And of course none of this addresses the fact that different people find different things alluring.  Strength is easy to measure in terms of raw ability to exert force; Appearance is opinion based, it's a retarded statistic.


It should really be replaced by something else.  Perhaps a social version of Perception, like Empathy.

 

[Haku1]

No, I meant description as in describing someone whose appearance is unearthly beautiful. After all, beauty is based entirely on perception, eye of the beholder and all that.


And, Joseph, I also agree with you that appearance shouldn't normally be handled by experience and definately, not the whole make-up deal/clothes. After all, you get the Goth Solars who must be VERY pretty or dead ugly when they a certain amount of essence.


Personally, I think that appearance is just that your appearance, that ineffable something that makes people stop and take a 2nd look at someone.

 

[Joseph]

No, I meant description as in describing someone whose appearance is unearthly beautiful. After all, beauty is based entirely on perception, eye of the beholder and all that.

Nothing will succeed in what you want here.  The best you can do is label their physical features, and then pretty much say "By the way, it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen."  You can try for more poetic effects, but I don't think you'll succeed in impressing anyone.

And, Joseph, I also agree with you that appearance shouldn't normally be handled by experience and definately, not the whole make-up deal/clothes. After all, you get the Goth Solars who must be VERY pretty or dead ugly when they a certain amount of essence.

And Abyssals are one of the few times in the game that Appearance alteration via XP actually seems justified.  I still think it's better to just replace it with Empathy and then have their Appearance be pure RP.

Personally, I think that appearance is just that your appearance, that ineffable something that makes people stop and take a 2nd look at someone.

I've never experienced such a quality, so I have no useful comment with regards to it beyond the fact that it sounds made up.

 

[StarHawk]

I know in NWoD the appearance stat has been removed and replaced with another one. (I think empathy like Joe said.) It's another option for exalted I think. I found in my group appearance doesn't do much. It helps in very few rolls unless you as the player are going out of you way to make rolls based off your looks.


An Idea on how one could describe appearance 6+ could be "They are the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, meet your new ideal of beauty" and beyond that there's the option of the character not being able to comprehend such beauty and all that garbage.


In my group when we encountered appearance 8 fae, we couldn't look upon such a beauty. (but I thought that fairly lame)

 

[Mareritt]

I’ll add my two jade here.


1) Ok, obviously beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that being said a deathlord would probably find utter disgust with some one with a high appearance, so I usually play appearance as is what the general public thinks is beautiful but yes it is kind of an opinionated attribute vs. strength or intelligence.


2) As the player is building it up to four dots and beyond, I’m firmly in the belief that raising it not only requires the player to give a really good explanation as to how, (and will not be anything physical [i.e. makeup, body tone, and the like] but more of a permanent charm or a gift from a god), but the player also needs a why.


3) When explaining a five dot and beyond I strongly recommend telling the effects of the people around the character to add to the explanation, what’s the point of having an appearance that high if the majority of the people wont ogle your character.  


Also as a note when you get to appearance six and higher I soundly believe, because there is so much essence involved in that attribute at that point when you think about it, that the people around the character will stop seeing the character for what they really look like and more of what they believe is beautiful (i.e. lets say female a character may have short green hair and deep purple eyes and she walks into a room with a man and a woman, while man sees the girl of his dreams with long blonde hair with blue eyes, while the woman failed a saving throw and sees what deep down she feels is beautiful, which to her is a long curly fiery red haired girl with green eyes).  Also I mentioned a fail in the woman’s roll (besides the fact that she’s a regular mortal that’s never seen such beauty), when she saw the character she started questioning her own sexuality (assuming she’s straight).  Now obviously the ST can play on this if he wants to (or if he wants to let the player toy with the mortal or what not), and many things can be left up to that: a) the mortal is only questioning her sexuality around that character and not around anyone else unless b) the ST decides that after several nights with the female character she will stop questioning her sexuality for good, c) she decides that she never really knew why she liked the opposite sex to begin with and starts looking for mates the same sex (even if she never sees that character again) etc. etc. etc.  I can easily go on with a list as you can see, and the ST can play this out how he deems fit.


However on the flip side of that coin here’s what can also happen, the female character runs into a maiden of some high appearance goddess in Yu-Shan (you can see how I’m playing this out).  Since the NPC has gotten use to her own masters beauty she can have a saving throw against it and if she succeeds she then rolls to see if she is completely unaffected and only sees the character for who she really is (a six appearance being that is the because of essence but however she NPC is not effected by the essence that makes the appearance so high) or if she sees the character as a threat to her master or is jealous or whatever and starts to hate her right then and there.


Also as I stated above that you needed (or at least should have) a damn good reason why the player wants a character with such a high appearance (not just for looks but looks with a purpose); take the female Abyssal of one of my players a while back, I told him normally Abyssals don’t have such a high appearance due to the trauma they go through (well sometimes up to the ST really) on their path to forsake their names and a lot of the underworlds hatred for such beauty, he told me that not only did he want the mortal masses to not only fall prey to his characters beauty but also she was a musician and coupled with her beauty she could easily grab masses attention when she started to plain her violin. “Which would you rather watch, a hideously ugly woman playing the violin or an extremely beautiful one?â€

 

[Haku1]

Heh... the answers here are amusing in their own way.


Okay, the primary reason why I asked was I've been fielding a 1000 xp solar in a STFU game... where anything really goes. ;


And yes, the Zenith I'm packing has appearance 7, legendary beauty coupled with an essence of 6. The reason she has that ungoddly beauty is so that she can make all who she meets to worship her, love her and despair...

 

[Andrew02]

I'd just go with the "oh, this person is the most beautiful/handsome person you have ever seen. So beautiful/handsome that your feeble mind cannot contain the memory of it in full. All you recall is that [character X] is an idol of physical perfection."

 

[psychoph]

And Abyssals are one of the few times in the game that Appearance alteration via XP actually seems justified.  I still think it's better to just replace it with Empathy and then have their Appearance be pure RP.

Isn't Abysmal alterations the same kind of thing though because they become more beautiful to some but not necessarily others.  


I conceed the point that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and makes a rating pretty much irrelevant.

 

[Haku1]

I think a quote from the zenith book about how fire is both beautiful and dangerous is applicable here.


Beauty doesn't have to comform to the standards that we hold, for all I know... and think its most likely once you hit appearance 5+, that is 6 and up, your character now has her inner essence shining thru, and it is this essence/feel shining out, gracing your every movement, the way you look, defining you on the crude form of creation that defines appearance.


In which case, abyssals with high essence really should have high appearance, both the pretty ones and the scary ones that look all dead-like.

 

[Persell]

Appearance doesn't make sense as a statistic anyway, particularly not one you can raise with experience.  I've heard people attempt to justify it by saying things like "Oh, you learn to take better care of yourself and dress yourself up nicer," and to that I say bullshit.  Things you "learn to do" are Abilities, not Attributes.  Wearing makeup wouldn't raise your Appearance Attribute, it would just give you a bonus die or two to Appearance related pools, just as glasses give you a bonus to Perception related pools of certain varieties, NOT additional actual Perception.
In conclusion: don't worry about it, it's stupid, nonsensical, and lame.

Thank you WW, for dropping the appearance attribute in the nWoD rules. I have implemented those in my Exalted Campaign and it works nicely. In this system, if you wanted a superhuman appearance you would take it as a merit. In all other sircumstances, your appearance is a matter of roleplaying, so to speak. You decide how you look, because it simply doesn't make sense as a statistic on the character sheet.

 

[Haku1]

Appearance doesn't make sense as a statistic anyway, particularly not one you can raise with experience.  I've heard people attempt to justify it by saying things like "Oh, you learn to take better care of yourself and dress yourself up nicer," and to that I say bullshit.  Things you "learn to do" are Abilities, not Attributes.  Wearing makeup wouldn't raise your Appearance Attribute, it would just give you a bonus die or two to Appearance related pools, just as glasses give you a bonus to Perception related pools of certain varieties, NOT additional actual Perception.
In conclusion: don't worry about it, it's stupid, nonsensical, and lame.

Thank you WW, for dropping the appearance attribute in the nWoD rules. I have implemented those in my Exalted Campaign and it works nicely. In this system, if you wanted a superhuman appearance you would take it as a merit. In all other sircumstances, your appearance is a matter of roleplaying, so to speak. You decide how you look, because it simply doesn't make sense as a statistic on the character sheet.

Hmmm... since you dropped an attribute, what did you use in replacement?

 

[Andrew02]

My only disappointment with Appearance is that it was virtually unimplemented. There are only a handful of examples one could cite where Appearance actually matters, and of those, Appearance either is merely suggested as a factor (as in seduction) or not affecting the roll too much (Irresistable Succubus Style).


Fuck, even White Wolf's Street Fighter RPG actually made Appearance do something worthwhile. I am stymied by how they could make Appearance so useless in this game.

 

[Joseph]

Isn't Abysmal alterations the same kind of thing though because they become more beautiful to some but not necessarily others.  
I conceed the point that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and makes a rating pretty much irrelevant.

What I was more conceding with that is, "IF one is to accept some weird objective standard of beauty, THEN Abyssal Exaltation is one of the few means that makes sense of becoming more beautiful with XP as one goes up in Essence."  It was sort of a separate point based on the assumption that you hypothetically didn't go for the more solid "This Attribute is rubbish" point.

 

[Joseph]

My only disappointment with Appearance is that it was virtually unimplemented. There are only a handful of examples one could cite where Appearance actually matters, and of those, Appearance either is merely suggested as a factor (as in seduction) or not affecting the roll too much (Irresistable Succubus Style).
Fuck, even White Wolf's Street Fighter RPG actually made Appearance do something worthwhile. I am stymied by how they could make Appearance so useless in this game.

Appearance had its uses in Exalted.  Almost every social Attribute can be combined with Appearance, for instance.  But yeah, it's mostly just for making impressions on people; it's surely the most limited of Attributes, even if it has SOME mechanical uses.

 

[Persell]

Hmmm... since you dropped an attribute, what did you use in replacement?

I have adopted the nWoD attributes (and some other stats), so the social attributes are now pressence (which I am renaming to charisma by the way), manipulation and composure. The last has some similarities with the virtue temperance, but as attributes and virtues are very different kinds of stats it really isn't that big a problem.

 

[Flagg]

Care to elaborate on "Composure", for those of us without the nWoD books?


-S

 

[Persell]

What I dislike most about appearance is that looks are a passive trait in a person. You look how you look. Wearing clothes of a certain cut to make you look slimmer or well-aplied make-up is more like a socialize or larceny (disguise) action. To seduce people using only your appearance is actually a question of waiting for them to seduce you and then just accepting. Its not an active action, not anything you can roll dice to do.

 

[Persell]

Care to elaborate on "Composure", for those of us without the nWoD books?

I beg your pardon. I didn't think of that.


Composure is described as "Poise. Dignity. The capacity to remain calm and appear - and actually be - unfazed in social and threatening situations, usually harrowing ones..." So it's the ability to keep your cool in all sircumstances.

 

[Flagg]

Composure is described as "Poise. Dignity. The capacity to remain calm and appear - and actually be - unfazed in social and threatening situations, usually harrowing ones..." So it's the ability to keep your cool in all sircumstances.

Hmm... Could you give an example of a Composure+Ability roll, and the relevant sitation it would be used in?


Also, how do you integrate this Attribute with Lunar/Alchemical Charms?


-S

 

[psychoph]

Composure is described as "Poise. Dignity. The capacity to remain calm and appear - and actually be - unfazed in social and threatening situations, usually harrowing ones..." So it's the ability to keep your cool in all sircumstances.

Couldn't that be applied to Appearance as well.  I.E. Appearance is not only physical beauty but your ability to appear a certain way.  I appear sad, I appear mad, I appear calm, even when you are not?


this is the definition i got from www.dictionary.com


ap·pear·ance   Audio pronunciation of "appearance" ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (-pîrns)


n.


  1. The act or an instance of coming into sight.


  2. The act or an instance of coming into public view: The author made a rare personal appearance.


  3. Outward aspect: an untidy appearance.


  4. Something that appears; a phenomenon.


  5. A superficial aspect; a semblance: keeping up an appearance of wealth.


  6. appearances Outward indications; circumstances: a cheerful person, to all appearances.

 

[Persell]

Hmm... Could you give an example of a Composure+Ability roll, and the relevant sitation it would be used in?

I'll give ya two


1: Flowering Tailfeather is about to demonstrate his secret family martial art to the assembled court. Much depends on this demonstration going well, as only the heirs to the throne know the secret of this particular martial art. So Tailfeather is of course really nervous, as his whole future and probably life hangs in the balance. To steady his shaking hands and tumultuous mind he decides to center himself for a moment. His player rolls Composure + Brawl (martial arts) for meditation.


2: Crumpled Magazine is stalked by a carnivorous spirit as he takes his daily stroll through his garden. The spirit knows that if it inspires sadness in him he will retreat to his wives' graves in a secluded part of the garden and wish to be alone giving the spirit ample opportunity to devour the poor man alive. The spirit uses some nefarious charm to make him sad and Crumpled Magazine rolls composure to resist the emotional attack.

Also, how do you integrate this Attribute with Lunar/Alchemical Charms?

Actually I haven't gotten that far. We have a Lunar in my campaign, but he he is new and haven't enough xp to buy charms yet, so it hasn't really come up yet. As to Alchemicals it's about the same. I don't have the game yet. But as appearance and perception are pretty useless attributes it shouldn't pose too much of a problem.