Whats your COMELINESS?

[Mutant for Hire]

Originally posted by DynamiteKid

Personally, I see comeliness as a characteristic that's as valid as any other. Some people get into the number crunching aspects of the game and don't put too much emphasis on the RP side of things. My characters' appearance are just as important as their powers and backgrounds. In the games that I've participated in, COM as well as other characteristics, were more than just a number on my sheet. There was purpose for each characteristic. Why is he or she that strong? Why is her or she that fast? When the character is then set up with values, it's more than "I want 20 STR so that I can do 4 dice of HtH damage by default.". It was more like "I want 20 STR because he trained himself to the limits of human ability."

 

Distinctive feature and reaction rolls were brought up but I think that those aren't needed as the sole tools/triggers for character interaction. For example, Evil Supervillain A(ESA) NPC is easilly swayed by an attractive captive. This is due to his background(Fancies himself a ladies man, has huge ego, and so on). So a PC heroine with 16 - 20 COM(I consider 20 to be max for a non-superhuman) would be able to inspire a reaction with little effort(A bit of decent RP is all that's needed). Now onto Evil Supervillain B(ESB) NPC. He's a powerhungry type that is obssessed with total domination. He has little time for fooling around with anything other than his evil plots and schemes. No time for the ladies. Thus the same attractive heroine PC would have a much more difficult time getting the same reaction from this NPC. Even spectacular RP might not do the trick. This is because we're taking the backgrounds of ESA and ESB into account. It makes sense for one of them to react to the PC heroine as any "hot blooded male" should(ESA). It also makes sense for the other NPC to not react the same way due to his particular background(ESB). This, to me, adds to the RP experience. It's more than following numbers for situations like "What should I do? Wait, let me refer to my sheet. Oh, I have (insert characteristic/skill/power here). Hmm, well let me roll to see if I can make this check.". Sometimes, it's fun to go a bit freestyle and just say "Oh, this situation seems to call for this action(ie. rolling the dice for a check) because that's how my character would respond."

 

Gaming seemed more lively when I was able to see my characters as more than just a collection of numbers. My characters had more depth and I was able to have much more fun at the sessions.

 

Yes, the roleplaying aspect is important, but that leaves the question of why HERO has fourteen stats and is very number heavy. Think of the numbers and mechanics as the skeleton of the game, the framework to hang things off of. It's good to have some quanitifiable mechanics to work with COM, namely in the area of PRE rolls. If players want to go with a PRE roll, then there should be some mechanics for how much of an impact COM has.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Y'know, it would be nice to have some actual game mechanics influence for a stat, but considering how cheap it is, I'll not lobby *too* hard...and I'd *hate* to see it just go away!

 

For the record, every player I've ever had has dumped *some* points into Comeliness. The low-end COM I've seen for a PC in one of my games is 14; most are in the 17-18 range, and I've had one that was a 27 -- but then, that character was a half-mortal daughter of Apollo, so perhaps it's understandable!

[Supreme]

Originally posted by Zaratustra

The problem with COM is that Hero doesn't have Reaction Rolls like GURPS and others, so COM kind of hangs there on midair. I'd treat COM as Skill Levels on the relevant skills (Seduction, Conversation with the proper sexual preference, etc. 3 points per level?) and simulate really high or really low COM with PRE bonuses and powers like Mind Control.

Normally true, yes. Necessarily true, no. There are such things as stat vs stat rolls (COM vs COM, COM vs PRE, PRE vs PRE, etc.). You can also easily make stat-based COM rolls, PRE rolls, and others to simulate the old GURPS-style reaction rolls. Though in general, I think HERO favors role-playing personal interactions vs. roll-playing them.

[DynamiteKid]

Originally posted by Supreme

Though in general, I think HERO favors role-playing personal interactions vs. roll-playing them.

 

Role-playing vs. roll-playing. I'll have to remember that.

[coach]

Yeah, I think a lot of people have missed the whole roll-playing vs role-playing aspect of the game. My group can go through significant portions of a game night without ever rolling any dice. But does that mean that the numbers on the paper don't mean anything? Of course not. We just take them into account when we are ROLE playing. So, Jimmy has a 10 COM and Johnny has a 20 COM. They both go out and are trying to pick up girls in the bar. Who do you think is going to do better? We play it out verbally, of course, but also take into account those things when we do it. Now, if Jimmy bought Seduction at a 17-, then he would probably do better.

 

There's a lot of the just plain old personal interaction stuff that we do without much dicing. And in that case, COM can have a significant influence. As can PRE. Or even things like STR or Distinctive Features. You don't have to roll for everything just to tell you how the characters will react.

 

For my own PC's I pretty much always give them at least a 16 COM, and I'm more of a number-cruncher than most. It's fun to have good looking characters and it helps out when trying to make nice with people.

 

Heck, in one of the funniest COM related stories we had, in my Gamma World game, the other PCs forced one of the players to have plastic surgery to fix some of his scars and bring his COM up from 6 to at least 10. He was freaking out too many of the townsfolk in their travels and they got tired of "looking" at him. Use that stuff for role-playing bits and it makes it a lot more fun.

[Mutant for Hire]

I'm not missing the roleplaying versus rollplaying, but there is also the fact that the GM need not want to roleplay for every NPC that comes along. And there are times when a GM might want the dice to govern. There are times when the objectivity of dice and mechanics are as useful as the subjectivity of roleplaying.

 

What I want is for the roleplaying and the rollplaying to have some consistancy to them. If the GM roleplays that attractive people do better in social situations, then I'd like to see something of that reflected in the mechanics. If you're going to talk about drama and roleplaying over dice rolling, there's a question of why we even bother to have dice and mechanics at all. Go with a diceless system for combat, so the GM can make it all dramatic.

 

And numbers can be a guide to the GM, or at least a good starting point. If we come up with a formula for making reaction rolls to COM, the number that results can be the basis. The GM can tweak it up or down as they see fit, but sometimes it really helps to have the number as a starting point.

 

It's also good for the players as well. People want to know what characteristic = x means. What impact it has on the game. If you're spending character points on a stat, its nice to have game mechanics impacts for that number so the players have a rough guidline as to what their characters can do. Even if a GM roleplays out their encounters, it still helps to know that one character has a base PRE roll of 11-, another 14- and yet another has one of 17-. Even if you roleplay things out, you know that the first is fairly ordinary while the second makes a powerful impression and the last makes an overwhelming one.

 

So I'd like to come up with a good system for quantifying COM effects in social situations as a good starting rule of thumb for players and GM to go by. A benchmark that both sides can agree on. That's the whole point to dice and mechanics, to give a reference for everyone to play against.

[Fur Face]

Reputation as Model

 

Here's an interesting thought: If you can buy a reputation as a perk (5e p 59-60), and have that reputation add x # dice based on interaction skills and PRE attacks, why not do the same for COM? Being more attractive physically is a perk in most situations. You could also define this perk as being less effective the more time you spend around the same people, is you so desire.

 

Hmm, this sparks an idea. I just had a vague memory from my old AD&D 1st edition games, about a book from Gary Gygax that actually had a system already mapped out. It was not in the main rules, but in one of the first rules additions. I seem to remember reaction roll modifiers & such. I wonder if I still have it some where?

 

Okay, so maybe I'm dating myself!

[Fur Face]

Comely Character Powers?

 

Has anyone ever developed a character with COM based powers, or played in games that had characters like that? I'm starting to work on one, just for the halibut! If you did, was the character more for giggles, or were they serious contenders (Johnny Bravo or Fabio)?

 

If you played in a game with such a character, how did it go?