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How exactly can you RP your charisma correctly? This has always been tricky to me as a person that plays a character that as a race gets -2 to charisma. I'm talking about a tiefling in my case, it's confusing as I do not understand why they even get a penalty to charisma. I've been told before that it's because tieflings get traits that may be off putting to other certain characters. But realistically that wouldn't apply to everyone would it. I mean if you see a tiefling with horns as a regular human that human player may find it disturbing and that tiefling would be less charismatic in their eyes. If that human was also a shady individual they might not give a damn. You look at the stats of a lot of devils and demons why are they so charismatic then? IF this reasoning is true then this underlined quote of charisma doesn't apply to tieflings or other classes that get a penalty to charisma based on appearance.

Quote:

Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. This ability represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting. Charisma is most important for paladins, sorcerers, and bards. It is also important for clerics, since it affects their ability to turn undead. Every creature has a Charisma score.

Tieflings in particular get this penalty to charisma then get a bonus to bluff. A lot of people that can bluff well can appear very charismatic so this confuses me a bit on how we judge the charisma ability exactly. Do we base charisma on physical appearance? Do we base it off their ability to lead, how well they get along with others? Should all characters with low charisma be perceived as some pig nosed poorly dressed person with poor hygiene. Is the penalty to charisma because of some inner battle with their fiendish blood? If that is the case then it shouldn't apply to everyone, some embrace their fiendish heritage while others turn from it. But then the same goes for aasimar, why is it they are more charismatic than tieflings, not only do they not get a penalty but they get a bonus to charisma. Are aasimars prettier? Do they have a more sound mind on average? They would have to deal with inner struggles the same as a tiefling, not all of them want to do good they just have a predisposition to do good.

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Tiefling

Not an official answer but from that it appears the Charisma penalty is from multiple things: Charisma even says in the description it isn't just one thing. It is force of personality, physical appearance, personal magnetism etc. So from the adticle the penalty is most likely caused by: fiendish appearance, the fact most other races feel uncomfortable around them, they have a natural revulsion to other races only slightly less pronounced for half orcs, etc. A penalty does not mean it comes from one source. It simply illustrates something is amiss. Hope that answers your question.

I feel like Charisma is an oversimplification of something much more complex. Charisma is an extremely ambiguous thing and how it is portrayed is at the player's discretion.
Here's my two-cents about it.

In some instances, we can expect individuals with lots of charisma to be: physically attractive, smell pleasant. Socially: well spoken or have oratory prowess, possibly have leader-like qualities, be suave and/or sexy, convincing and persuasive.
Individuals with base or negative charisma scores can be: physically unattractive, smell unpleasant, have physical characteristics that would otherwise seem odd or grotesque to others. Socially: may not speak up so well, be socially awkward or odd (even quirky), apprehensive or possibly indecisive.

Charisma has to do with presentation of the self, physically and socially.

It's iffy from wherever you wish to see it.

I can understand a human being wary of a tiefling and hence the negative charisma score, but then why would two identical tieflings shoo each other?

Charisma, as said, is a matter of perception. The lore says tieflings get -2 of charisma for that reason, -but- wouldn't that mean that goblins, kobolds, orcs, half-something-things (etc) should get a similar hit? Yes, but they do not, so we can affirm that the reason behind could be a long list of small details that make people unnaturally and yet naturally uncomfortable around them.

I RP charisma in different fashions. Ais charisma is limited to a hefty 14, and he's an "acceptable" character because he's a jesting copperkin bard, but I do not picture him as a strong leader, nor reliable. He is, however, an overactor, which is something that comes directly out of the charisma and I can only justify as his close nature to the copper dragons.
Saris, however, although far more charismatic and serious, is seldom taken for real due to his kobold nature. Few would accept to bow down to the tactical mastery of a 3'5'' winged lizard, except his own kin or "lesser" creatures as he.

Out of this, we can determine that the charisma is something -secondary- in the interaction.
A character FIRST examines WHAT is it speaking to, and then allows itself to be influenced by the charisma of this whatever he's speaking, or at very least analyzing.
Once the first step is concluded, then the charisma influences very little if the creature is not "interesting" to the observer, or at very least neutral, as a first judgement is set. The so called first impression and prejudice.

I could go on with the nonsense, but I am trying to get rid of my bad habit of writing walls of text. MAaaaaaan, I love those.

EDIT: Oh, and don't even mention the sorcery in the topic, or we'll have 5 pages out of blabber.

Couldn't you argue that whilst fiendish races are charismatic, they are also reeking of evil and you kinda can tell it (unless they HIDE it) - whereas Tieflings (Zulings, Lothlings, Tanarlings) are all ostensibly normal but with an offputtingness about them. Perhaps the sound of their laugh is funny. Perhaps they smell of brimstone regardless of whether or not they ate boiled eggs. Perhaps their teeth are all pointy. Regardless of their base race, there is always something that 'others' them.

They also cause infertility - which is a pretty nasty stigma to deal with - you really want to sleep with someone whose baby might contaminate your womb and stop you from having any more children?

CHA is the can of worms everyone is sad they opened.

Steve Buscemi, not the greatest looking guy, but a very good actor. Now, does he have low charisma because of his looks, or high charisma, because of his personality?

On the other hand we have Lindsay Lohan, not a bad piece of work. Does she have high charisma based on her desirability, or low charisma, because she's a low-life?

There are many factors involved, and they are dependent on the players perspective of how they want to run their character.

I think you're being a) overly simplistic and b) getting off topic.

Charisma is how people find you likeable. This is a combination of how well you fit in, how charming or not you are and how attractive others find you. Tiefers therefore usually will fail on 1) and 3). They also have tend to be played with abrasive personalities (this is a broad generalisation) and therefore fall foul of 2).

I think the negative bonus shouldn't be messed with and makes sense. Even if you are a charismatic soul who is charming and so forth, you've always got that 'otherness' that nullifies part of your potential.

(offtopic example, in Crusader Kings II, if your heir is the child of a concubine, they will have a permanent -1 to their diplomacy score, simply because of who their mother was... That same heritage of 'omg is part fiend' counts too and also explains an Aasimar's +1... )

My reasoning for why Tieflings and Genasi receive a Charisma penalty can be found here.

Now, moving on to the title and topic at hand

Quote:

How exactly can you RP your charisma correctly?

You've been around long enough to know using the words RP and correctly in the same sentence never leads to a cohesive answer, Drac. Same thing happens when people ask how to correctly RP a class or alignment. But what you can get from these topics are interpretations that might aid you in forming your own understanding of a concept.

Both of my long-time PCs have high Charisma, so how to convey it is something I have thought about a lot over the years. The basic D&D description is usually fine enough: force of self and personality, leadership, creativity, conversation skills, etc. It is also interesting to look at the etymology of the word and interpret that into RP.

In classic RPGs, you have the six attributes, usually consisting of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution/Fortitude, Intelligence, Wisdom/Soul, and Spirit, Charisma, or Luck. Spirit is in fact a cool way to interpret the force of self that D&D calls Charisma. For the life of me, I wish they had made Charisma the Will-boosting attribute; if Will is used to avoid outside influences and intrusions of the mind and spirit, it seems like having a strong sense of your self, and an unyielding spirit, would serve to help you more than knowing that while a tomato is a fruit, you're not supposed to put it in a fruit salad...wisdom.

Another way I often look at it is a Creative Intuition, that Wisdom or Intellect cant really recreate. Intellect tells you why something is. Wisdom lets you understand how it is, even if you dont understand it in earnest. Charisma, well, it lets you see things as how they can be, within a certain latent pattern that the first two dont pick up on. A subconscious sense and knowledge of what could exists in this space, or how it might exist. I will give an example.

I love jazz music. Growing up, my dad played it around the house all the time. I was in concert band for all of Elementary up until high school, and then I played in a travelling jazz band in high school on Alto and Baritone Sax. When it comes to writing and playin jazz music, you can attack it in several different ways. Some of it is very feeling oriented and you just go with it. On the other side of the spectrum, you get Coltrane's Giant Steps and get fairly technical. However, when you get to things like ad libbing solos, I always found it was a lot more of the former. You know the key, you've had a few meters of actual song to riff off of or spin in some way, but you feel it. And for me at least, a lot of times I was playing ad libbed solos mainly off of feel and intuition built up over years of hearing and playing jazz. Without even consciously thinking about it. On paper, I can tell you why a Bb might sound nice in a particular part of a song, but for a solo, it probably didnt register for me what I had played until the pads were already pressed. Just hearing and rhythm and muscle memory that knew how to make the sound that would fit my current mood and the song.

I see that as a form Charisma. It is a creative sense that allows you to jump into patterns and without much conscious thought and find something that fits into it. It is how some sculptors approach their art as 'freeing' a figure from the rock. They see it already. Same way a painter can create a beautiful landscape without having seen any such one, just having a sense of how it might exist. For me, that partially explains why it is used for social skills; society is just another type of pattern. And the higher your Charisma, the more you can buy into, manipulate, and navigate those patterns. A professor of rhetoric can break down why a famous speech is so good. But the orator, even if he writes his stuff down beforehand, calls upon a sense of how to sell those lines and make them seem genuine, as if they are natural and right to exist as he is presenting them.

How was he/she being off topic? Anyway:

Wikipedia wrote:

The term charisma has two senses:

(1) compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others
(2) a divinely conferred power or talent.[2]

D&D 3.5 wrote:

[..]Charisma measures a person's force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. Charisma represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting.

One only needs to look at the skills and what their attribute modifier are to get an idea of how Dungeons & Dragons defines what said attribute is.

Suhjet wrote:

be socially awkward or odd (even quirky)

Captor's jagged rock-like skin and moss-tache aside, most of his negative Charisma score is from here. He's a total Technophile, he loves his Golems, clockwork gadgets, metal bars and smithing work.

Parkham wrote:

How was he/she being off topic?

My bad, I was dealing with the specificity of the Tiefling discussion and forgot when responding the second time that this was a general Charisma thread.

WARNING!!! I am about to Godwin the heck out of this thread.

Charisma has absolutely zero to do with whether people find you "likable."

D&D 3.5 wrote:

Charisma measures a person's force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. Charisma represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting.

You do not have to be well-liked to be persuasive, or a strong leader, or to have a magnetic personality. The classic example (Godwin warning again!) is Hitler. Absolutely *nobody* liked Hitler. His generals hated him, he abused and terrorized everyone around him. But hot damn, could that man inspire people. Watch footage of him addressing his troops or his citizenry, and it's freaking terrifying how expertly he manipulated them. He knew exactly what buttons to push, and how hard, and for how long. The dude's charisma was off the charts. And he was personally loathed, because he was an utter jackass.

The charisma character is not the one who everybody likes more. The charisma character is the one who everybody pays attention to. Think of any of your circles of friends: is there one individual who people just instinctively seem to gravitate towards? One who, when they leave the room, the conversation slows down? One who, when they move around a party, the emotional center of the gatherring seems to follow them? One who, when you're deciding what restaurant to go to or what board game to play or what movie to see, their opinion just somehow seems to carry more weight? That's the charisma character. You *like* all of your friends, right? But the charisma character just has something beyond the "like" that you feel.

That's what "force of personality" means. Being liked is not a part of it.

To more directly address the question of how to RP charisma:

You can't. You either have it, or you don't. RP is inherently pretending, and pretending to have charisma is the same thing as actually having it. You can pretend not to have it if you do (and if your character's charisma is lower than yours, you definitely should), but the reverse doesn't hold.

...though some players are more attracted to and impressed by those who can pretend to not be charismatic, and thus be more lured and open to them, giving them some form of natural charisma based on their skill in roleplay and dedication to character.

Man.

I'll use Gerald as an example for this since a lot of people have interacted with him.

Gerald is well spoken and tends to have a forceful personality. He can be what is needed by whom needs it at the time and he has a predisposition toward positions of leadership. I don't really play his looks in any fashion because I hate that sort of thing as a player, but he tends to be able to be what a potential romantic interest wants out of a person by getting a feel for their personality. So Gerald's charisma score in my case is measured one way: the capacity to measure how people want to interact and respond in kind.

My characters with a low charisma score on the other hand are usually not very well spoken and have some sort of ugly trait like beady eyes or tend to have habits that are unpleasant to be around like scratching themselves. They don't ever modify their own behavior to fit match who they're with and they don't really care because they're not good at it anyway.

That's just how I play them at least. I know it's easy to say "my character is teh secksy" or "ugly as sin" but in the end we can only show so much using the graphic engine NWN has. We're bound to the limitations of a 10 plus year old engine. If you want your character to be an ugly bastard, play him like an unpleasant ugly bastard. If you want them to be stupidly attractive, give them a certain confidence and have them bend to the personality the other character you're interacting with at the time is looking for.

That's just my take on it of course, and I'm far from invested in this discussion so I didn't put to much thought into my post.

Force of personality has a huge effect on whether people like/ respect you so I would argue it defenitely affects how people like you.

There have been many people who had no looks whatsoever in history but had something that people described as 'hypnotic' that drew people to follow them in the millions. That was charisma I think.

As for Hitler, a lot of his staff did like him to the point of worshipping him, especially before he decended into madness in 1942/1943. Otherwise the 1944 coup would have been staged four to six years earlier.
Intelligent people as Goebbels and Speer for one were changed after they met Hitler in person and liked him so strongly afterwards they refused to see his flaws.
Some generals did dislike him because of his background (They called him 'that corporal') which lacked rank or noble credentials but many more liked him especially after the victory over France.

I think we're miscommunicating here because of the complete vagueness of the word "like." I don't really feel like you've disagreed with what I was saying. "Like" is a different thing than admiration, or approval, or hero-worship. When I use the word "like," I mean to describe the feeling of enjoying someone's company on a personal level. Being awestruck by force of personality is an entirely different feeling.

... aren't PC stats way higher than Non-PC stats anyway, as adventurers? Wouldn't some random farmaboo from the sticks have way less charisma than a PC by virtue of being a regular joe? That doesn't mean he's not likable, or... uh, handsome.

Not really. Human average for an ability score is 10-11. Lots of adventurers aren't doing any better than that in several of their stats.

Agreed Liz!

We both expressed our views and we seem to have differant ideas of what entails 'liking' someone. I still don't fully agree with your assesment still but you make a good point.

If we want to discuss this particular sample further then we should do it in PM's or tells.

And yeps, 8-10 for a stat was average in 2e though you got stats between 3-18 there with normal rolling. It's fair to assume in 3e it would be around 10-11.

Being a mighty warrior with impressive strenght, constitution and dexterity doesn't have to mean you're smarter, wiser of have more force of personality then Joe the Farmhand as well.

Where it gets interesting is the case of 9CHA on a -2 subrace. Would that mean they're actually 11CHA with respect to how they choose their words, but 7CHA with respect to appearance?

Liz described it very well, and her opinion on charisma is on par with my own.

That being said, Wizard's of the Coast at times seems to have, at least in a few cases, given out charisma stats on gut feeling, rather than thinking about it. If Charisma is a force of personality, not your social standing or likability, tieflings having a negative two modifier makes no sense to me. The majority of their ancestors are inhereintly charismatic beings. Balors, Bebiliths, Glabrezus, Erinyes, and Succubis, all have positive charisma scores.

The tiefling CHA penalty really should be removed by now. It's not even balanced to its Aasimar counterpart.

Wait just one gosh darn second here... you mean to tell me that WotC did something dumb without really thinking it through?! I refuse to believe it! Scandal, blasphemy, outrage!!

NinjaClarinet wrote:

The tiefling CHA penalty really should be removed by now. It's not even balanced to its Aasimar counterpart.

Similar origins and themes don't make things counterparts. That same drum gets beaten every time people want Blackguard as a base class, because Paladin is supposedly its “counterpart.”

Uberuce wrote:

Where it gets interesting is the case of 9CHA on a -2 subrace. Would that mean they're actually 11CHA with respect to how they choose their words, but 7CHA with respect to appearance?

Well, I like to believe while CHA can be applied to appearance, it doesnt necessarily start or stop there. Its kind of the sum of all the qualities associated with it. You can still be a relatively attractive person with shit CHA, but the fact that you slouch, pick your nose in public, have a poor sense of communication, and are otherwise a forgettable person would cancel out a good deal of attraction others might feel for you otherwise.

Another way you can interpret CHA penalties is sense of self vs community. Things like Dwarves, Duergar, Shadow Elves, Svirneblin, Goblins and Chultans all come from relatively connective and insular communities. Some would be raised in a world where you never really think of yourself, rather, always putting yourself in the frame of what is best for the clan/group/family. There isn't as much need to develop a sense of “I,” and their culture might not encourage such thought anyway. When it comes down to them all by their lonesome, there isn't as much there as there would be with other races. Kind of like when you take one ant and separate him from the group. He kind of flails around a bit in circles because he has no idea what to do without a community around him. The CHA penalty might also that when dealing with anyone not of direct relation to you, you tend to be off-putting, because you don't know or understand how other people function.

Note: I'm not trying to defend any particular CHA penalties; I'm just back-reasoning to what is already a fact in the game setting. Same as my attempt to explain the Genasi/Tiefling CHA penalty.

That's as good an explanation as I've ever seen, DI.

I roleplay my Wood Elf's 8 CHA as being... well, a wood elf. She's better at dealing with her own people and such misunderstands people and is easily misunderstood. Her Charisma may not play as prominent a role were she back in High Forest, but I'd think it would be even more apparent in a city of Humans or Dwarves.

Charisma in 3rd edition is awfully written and pretty much makes little sense while being almost contrary to everything it was in previous editions. In 2nd ed, it made sense. Tieflings and aasimar both suffer from a perception problem. These stat alterations were formed in Planescape, the setting that created these races (as well as genasi).

Nobody trusts tieflings, not even on the planes. Even though there is no reason a tiefling cannot be good-aligned at all, "people" in the planes are extremely wary and discrinatory of them. They are typically abandoned at birth, often grow up in gangs on the streets, and a product of their environment. This said, a common theme of the race is the line tiefling who turns do-gooder (even paladin) in an effort to prove people wrong.

Aasimar are pretty much the reverse of this. They have the unearned reputation of being upstanding and trustworthy as if this were something to be passed on by blood. It isn't as aasimar can be as evil as the next guy, and many unscrupulous aasimar take full advantage their misplaced reputation to lie, cheat, and steal more easily. A fun thing for tiefling gangs to do is kidnap aasimar children into their gangs and corrupt them.

Genasi are different. They are supposed to be one of the most unique races in the multiverse. So rare that they don't even consider themselves as belonging to a race, but being a unique individual, so much so that they often cannot stand other genasi, even of their own kind. This makes them arrogant and look down on others who they see as common and incapable of understanding their majesty.

This is where the stat adjustments to charisma originally come from. Naturally, Greenwood does what he always does and upon seeing something new wants in his setting, stole it, disregarded the lore he didn't like and wrote them as he pleased, so things in the FR setting have a hard time making much sense. (Now genasi are common! And happy people! And genies like them... despite seeing them as terrible, shameful reminders that are socially embarassing to them... Err? Yeah, no sense.)

Now to be honest, I'm not sure just how forceful your personality can be if anyone you turn it on assumes everything dropping out of your mouth is a lie and trusting you is a foolish move. After all, a really charismatic black man isn't going to convince a KKK grand wizard bigot of anything. To be brutally honest, given the setting is a prime world, if I were running the ruleset, I'd subtract at least 2 from the charisma of every planar race. Charisma is s setting-dependent and those values come from a setting where demons and devils walk the streets and sell you items at market. Primes are stupid, xenophobic, and ignorant ("Clueless" is an apt term) and Faerunians are no exception to that. 99+% of them will have never heard the terms tiefling, aasimar, or genasi and would be wary of the freak wandering down the street with horns, a tail, wings, wierd skin, or who is cold to touch. But, this is Amia, a place where freakier stuff is on the streets every day. (On Krynn, where pretty much every plane is the Abyss, I'd give them a -6 at least!)

A more accurate reaction to planetouched from your typical prime would be like those anti-outsider hicks in that one snowy village who threaten you with banishment scrolls. Granted, they shouldn't act like knowing what you are is as easy as opening their monster manuals and reading a stat block, but they should be peery of the weirdo who looks or seems "off."

I love the discussions going on! Amazing ideas and opinions!

But i need to reinforce one point: Charisma is not about good looks, just partly. Please bare this in mind.

I take the minimalist approach; which dice rolls are affected by charisma? The social ones and UMD? And it's only a -1? Okay. So, not going to seriously dominate any conversation unless everyone lets them (ie willingly fails the opposed check).

Absolutely everything else is to be covered under artistic licence.

Having a -2 modifier charisma race doesn't mean your character automatically has low charisma. Your charisma score is your charisma score. A teifling can still start the game with 16 points of charisma, making them 6 points more charming then the average human.

You can power build a dwarf to have 25 charisma if you so wish.. A dwarf with the looks and charm to make any lady (or man) drop their pants at 'hello'.

The minus two is just a way of saying the avarge charisma of this race is low.

There are two problems with RPing charisma in this game.

1) its a two dimentional computer game where everyone looks and sounds basically the same.

2) if you don't have 25 charisma yourself how do you expect to be able to RP somebody with godlike charm? You can't. Its the same problem with high wisdom or intelligence.

Really the only way around these problems is for other people to do the rping for you. They should cater the way they react to you character based on your charisma. Character discriptions help for this. If someone has written that their female character is 'a flawless beauty etc etc' then I will adapt my characters reactions to her attractiveness and which will probably be more favourable. Of course you should try to reflect your characters charisma in your RP as much as possible but there are limits.

The sane goes for low charisma characters, people tend to get away with rping them badly. I suppose it is because everyone just wants to be likeable. It goes two ways as well. If you meet someone with 6 charisma you will probably find it differcult to interact with them because you find them so repulsive. Unfortunately I rarely see this happening, either because people don't know that they have low charisma or that they ignore it as they'd rather just have a normal social interaction.

I honestly get tired of people saying how flawlessly beautiful / superbly awesome / etc they appear in their bios. I don't care how sexy your kobold is to other kobolds, the dwarf probably isn't going to see that. I find that listing identifiable traits works better as everyone's vision of beauty and appeal differs-- or at least they should, especially on a racial basis.

Some Elf wrote:

A magnificently beautiful woman with flawless skin and perfect hair stands before you. Also butts and ears.

Dwarf: Perfect? GIRLIE DUNNAE EVEN HAVE 'ER BEARD!

My character has 8 charisma. Most people wouldn't consider half-orcs attractive, unless they like the idea of being with hulking meatheads - which obviously does happen in real life. In which case my 8 charisma score doesn't matter so much because in that respect beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The way I believe I represent his 8 charisma score better is that he's rude, has mood swings and is quite unpredictable. He's not someone who you can get along with easily and he's not somebody you'd confide personal secrets in, yet he would probably get along well with other people who share similar characteristics and values.

A sore point for me is charisma representing 'ability to lead,' because as a player I am aware that I bring elements of the dramatic into nearly any character I play, and am a sucker for wanting to unleash long-winded, inspirational speeches with a flourish. Due to his responsibilities it is important for him to have some level of 'people skills,' but I believe his wisdom and intelligence scores are high enough for him to understand his flaws and do his best to remedy them when the situation demands it. If you caught him after a few drinks at a bar he'd most likely leave a bad impression, so if he knew he had to deliver an important speech he would try his hardest to craft something inspirational - or better still, find someone else to do it who is naturally gifted that way.

And at the end of the day, so long as your character is fun to play as/with and not a total Mary Sue then roleplaying around your ability scores takes a backseat, in my opinion. I can relate to a character, but I'm not far enough into the matrix to relate to numbers quite yet.

I'm more of the opinion that your personality should be based off all three mental stats, and that your appearance is more determined by your physical stats. Charisma might come in to looks, but to me it's more along the lines of this for appearance:

Strength: How well built you are. The stronger you are, the more muscular you are.
Dexterity: Grace. The more dextrous you are, the more poise you have. I always assume low dex-ers slouch a lot.
Constitution: Stocky-ness. Are you built like a brick wall, or are you a more compact creature?
Charisma: Texture. How you compare on unkempt-ness and grooming. High charisma indicates that you are 'dapper' or 'chic'.

You can pretty realistically say that there's people out there who are horrendous to speak with, but they have really nice and well chiseled abs. Or the sculpted butt of a Michelangelo masterpiece. That has nothing to do with actual charisma, instead it's the amount of work you do to make yourself look like that. And the main thing is that not everyone finds that attractive. You could be the absolute Grecian ideal and walk around as a manifest god with your physique but if people just aren't into that then you won't be attractive no matter how you look, or how well you dress up that look with grooming.

There is no universal standard of beauty which operates on a sliding scale of 'hot or not', and everyone can be attractive in different ways. In my head Half-orcs are built, Elves are elegant, Dwarves are rugged, all corresponding to their stats. And anyone can find those physical attributes attractive or unattractive at their own discretion. They can also all be jerks who don't bathe, which makes even the most perfect of rears stink. If anything, one thing that pisses me off is people who assume the mantle of 'totally hot, guys' on account of a high charisma but also completely ignore their 25 strength that nets them devastating critical. No, I will not believe that a delicate waif will swing around an axe that smashes through a giant's skull.

As for personality, I always consider it made up of all mental stats, not just charisma.

Intelligence: Cunning, educated and clever or pretty dull and simple for the low end.
Wisdom: Confidence, experience, and sage-like or foolhardy and rash on the low end.
Charisma: Extroverted, social and forceful, or withdrawn, meek or possibly rude on the low end.

In most cases, I consider the various genasi and tieflings of the world to earn their -2 charisma from simply being shunned in one way or another. This manifests as them merely being used to others not getting along with them, and they either don't try to relate to others and keep to themselves, or they're brash and rude despite that form of social boundary. It won't necessarily impact on their appearance in my mind, because I'm more interested in that sexy sexy strength-dexterity ratio. Mmm.

Post Resurrection....

+1 To what Murkoph said. I always wondered how someone with above average strength, agility, and health would NOT be attractive.

But you could be skinny, sickly, and clumsy with 40 CHA and be smokin' hot? Makes no sense.

"I always wondered how someone with above average strength, agility, and health would NOT be attractive."

"But you could be skinny, sickly, and clumsy with 40 CHA and be smokin' hot?"

Carrot Top exists and Brittany Murphy died of pneumonia. Your argument is invalid.

If I were a woman I'd want Carrot Top's babies.

There is a baby carrot joke in there somewhere.

Krin wrote:

If I were a woman I'd want Carrot Top's babies.

There is a baby carrot joke in there somewhere.

Carrot Top would only use a dildo on a woman, so no babies. He does have chiseled abs tho.

Facetious as I was, my point was merely that either of those is possible within a character. In fact, the concepts of "fragile" beauty exist as tropes in plenty of cultures and stories. I can think of more dainty maidens (and even some males) than I care to remember. On the other end of the spectrum, you have insanely strong and fit personalities that are incredibly unattractive, either physically or socially. Conan the Barbarian, Rorschach, Guts from Berserk. While "beauty" is can be pretty subjective, there are plenty of characters in media and literature that bump the notion that simply being strong makes you attractive or that being weak makes you ugly. And just as equally, you can find sickly, detestable weaklings or Fabio's with the personal magnetism of Mark Antony.

If anything, that fact reinforces the notion that Charisma is more than being a hottie with a body. Doesn't preclude it, though.

I kinda think Dark Immolation gave the best answer in this topic, the links were especially helpful.

the phb says it pretty well...you can be ugly and highly charismatic through personal gravitas, but you cant be beautiful with a low charisma, it denotes physical attractiveness aswell...we live in a world of stats when playing d20 and how pretty you are is part of that, and if everything else about your body and mind is defined by the other 5 stats then so is beauty *flies off to nepal...seriusly..just waiting in istanbul doing NOTHING*

Flies off to nepal?

This just in: Gibbering Orbs found irresistibly sexy and physically attractive due to high Charisma score (22). Rampant inter-species orgies plague Faerun at large. Amia and surrounding locales reporting no major changes.

Would bang/10.

Pretty much with Murkoph said with the addition that I wince whenever I see a bio describing how beautifull, radiant and physically atractive a character is and then see an 8 or lower for charisma on the character sheet.

I think it's generally best to just not describe your character in your character description using any word which is positive or negative in tone, don't imply any feature your character has is a good thing which means they're 'attractive'. You look like what you look like - so don't judge your characters' standards of beauty (or even your own standards of beauty, people!) as being one way or another because chances are someone's in to that, and you're just alienating people with different preferences by implying they're odd.

people can be beautiful but still be a jackass, I thought Con was physical beauty, charisma more like people skills?

I think my favourite one I've seen was a 6 charisma character whose bio stated they were "Incredibly adorable and completely impossible to dislike." I've basically given up asking people to RP their stats now.

How Charismatic are you?

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