Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

[Nolgroth]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

hehe. Sorry to pester. Loved that template.

Err. My command of the English language must be suffering. The phrase "pester" does not jive with the phrase "Loved that template."

[Enforcer84]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Err. My command of the English language must be suffering. The phrase "pester" does not jive with the phrase "Loved that template."

Could be mine. I meant I was sorry to contribute to the ...semi-annual COM debate.

Mostly because I can't really stop myself from posting about it. That was the pestering. The Template is similar to one rjCurrie made me. Which I love.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

*sigh* one of my big gripes about 6th, second only to the decoupling of secondary characteristics is the removal of COM.

 

I have never had an issue with COM having a mechanical effect. Normally i gave characters a bonus of +1 for every 5 points of COM to social skill rolls depending on the situation. Seduction is the main skill that benefits from a high COM (and a low COM provides negatives) but it could also affect Conversation, Persuasion, disguose (an extremely high or low COM can be difficult to hide and can provide penalties if teying to disguise yourself as someone with a much higher or lower COM)

below average and (especially) negative COM gave a bonus to intimidation rolls and a bonus (+1D6) to PRE Attacks to cause fear. High COM adds bonuses to PRE Attacks to impress. (The debutante with a COM of 20the wants to make a hell of an entrance at the ball. She buys the most beautiful dress she can afford and finds a beautician who through the wizardry of makeup, increases her COM by +3, then when she saunters into the ball, all eyes are on her and she makes a PRE attack at +3D6: +1D63 for the fabulous dress and +2D63 for the COM exceeding 20!)

 

There are SOOOOO many ways that COM can effect social situations. Dont hate just because you couldnt think of any! (Just kidding!)

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

*sigh* one of my big gripes about 6th' date=' second only to the decoupling of secondary characteristics is the removal of COM.I have never had an issue with COM having a mechanical effect. Normally i gave characters a bonus of +1 for every 5 points of COM to social skill rolls depending on the situation. Seduction is the main skill that benefits from a high COM (and a low COM provides negatives) but it could also affect Conversation, Persuasion, disguose (an extremely high or low COM can be difficult to hide and can provide penalties if teying to disguise yourself as someone with a much higher or lower COM) below average and (especially) negative COM gave a bonus to intimidation rolls and a bonus (+1D6) to PRE Attacks to cause fear. High COM adds bonuses to PRE Attacks to impress. (The debutante with a COM of 20the wants to make a hell of an entrance at the ball. She buys the most beautiful dress she can afford and finds a beautician who through the wizardry of makeup, increases her COM by +3, then when she saunters into the ball, all eyes are on her and she makes a PRE attack at +3D6: +1D63 for the fabulous dress and +2D63 for the COM exceeding 20!)There are SOOOOO many ways that COM can effect social situations. Dont hate just because you couldnt think of any! (Just kidding!)[/quote']That sounds like you came up with some great house rules to deal with how little detail the rules actually paid to COM.

[dmjalund]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Peverse solution: COM as a figured characteristic

 

 

 

 

:ducks:

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Well lets not forgtet that COM orginally wasn't purely about physical apperence but overall personality. Which through that lens makes it easier to use as a complimentry skill.

[rjcurrie]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Well lets not forgtet that COM orginally wasn't purely about physical apperence but overall personality. Which through that lens makes it easier to use as a complimentry skill.

 

From the first edition of Champions in 1981:

 

This characteristic represents how beautiful or handsome a character is. 1pt. of COM costs 1/2 Power Point.

 

That's it. That's the entire original definition of COM.

[Greywind]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

I think he's thinking of D&D's Charisma

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

In 6e, comeliness is really more like a sfx of PRE, and Striking Appearance is just a way of buying PRE limited to that sfx. From a game mechanics standpoint, that works great. But there is still that desire to have a number attached to a character's attractiveness, and because PRE can represent many things even for a single character you don't get any direct correlation between PRE and comeliness.

 

On the one hand it shouldn't matter; if you want to define your character as ugly, plain, good-looking, or drop-dead gorgeous go ahead because it is just sfx like whether you have fire powers or cold powers. On the other hand you have Paris trying to decide which Greek goddess was the most beautiful, and that didn't end well. I think it probably depends on the players involved as to how important it is.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

I was on the "pro" side for COM. However, the argument that I buy for its removal is that it had no unique mechanic to justify its existence as a characteristic. Any mechanics it had, or which were suggested for it, modified PRE based abilities, so it was more like limited PRE than a characteristic in its own right. The only exception I can recall is the fellow who used it to resolve DEX ties on the basis the camera tends to focus on the better looking character.

 

If I wanted to maintain COM in the 6e model, it would logically have the same mechanics as Striking Appearance anyway. You could certainly establish it as base 10, 1/2 point per point, and then use [COM - 10/5] as a level of Striking Appearance. You could even use it as a complementary roll to PRE skills, on the theory the required roll, plus presumably some situations where it would not work (eg persuading The Computer or arguing online) would justify it being PRE with a limitation.

 

I liked COM, and I probably would lean to its retention or reinstatement, but I can't fault the logic that it didn't have an independent purpose as a mechanical characteristic in its own right.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

From the first edition of Champions in 1981:

 

 

 

That's it. That's the entire original definition of COM.

 

 

Repped for fact checking.

[Bloodstone]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

I mostly stayed out of the "Great COM Debate", but I've made my thoughts pretty well known now and then:

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/84780

[rjcurrie]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Well, the basic +1 per 5 points of COM is pretty much what Striking Appearance does.

 

Striking Appearance can be used to represent hideous appearances as well.

 

And I don't see how the ball entrance plays out any differently with Striking Appearance instead of COM.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Yeah. Striking appearance does what I wanted COM to do in the first place, using a different mechanic. I always assumed that a 10 COM was reasonably good-looking, while most people don't buy any; they're just regular schlubbs, and can range from "pleasantly good-looking" to "Ugly as a mud fence", but not horrifying or exceptionally good-looking in any case. Buy Striking appearance, and now you have not only a mechanism which tells you how good-looking people will find you, but gives a clue as to who or what will agree or disagree that the character is appealing. Miss NGC-5879, a gelatinous creature, won the Miss Multiverse Beauty Pageant in the next galaxy over. To humans there is very little to differentiate between her and others of her species, and she looks like a blob of mobile jelly. She may be COM 20 or better where she's from, but humans use a different yardstick to measure these things. That's one thing I didn't like about COM. If you were beautiful, anything and everybody who looked at you would see "beautiful", even if, logically, to some, you should have been percieved as a different animal with different standards of beauty? Can an alligator be COM 20? Yes, but only to another alligator.

 

Is Miss NGC-5879 a "nice person" despite her appearance (to humans)? That depends on how her player plays her.

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

I think he's thinking of D&D's Charisma

 

No this is what I was thinking about:

 

COM: The average person on the street has a 10 COM. This is highly variable, since COM is an amalgam of appearence, manner, speech, dress, style, etc. A person's COM can increase although their physical appearence has not changed. A COM of 14 or 16 is not unusual, and very beautiful or hansome people will have a COM of 20 (movie stars, for example). Champions II pg 59.

 

I erred by thinking that this was the same as Champions I.

[Greywind]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

In 6e, comeliness is really more like a sfx of PRE, and Striking Appearance is just a way of buying PRE limited to that sfx. From a game mechanics standpoint, that works great. But there is still that desire to have a number attached to a character's attractiveness, and because PRE can represent many things even for a single character you don't get any direct correlation between PRE and comeliness.

 

On the one hand it shouldn't matter; if you want to define your character as ugly, plain, good-looking, or drop-dead gorgeous go ahead because it is just sfx like whether you have fire powers or cold powers. On the other hand you have Paris trying to decide which Greek goddess was the most beautiful, and that didn't end well. I think it probably depends on the players involved as to how important it is.

PRE tends to encapsulate too many things to me.

 

Force of presence: the people that you automatically tend to notice when they walk into a room. Hitler wasn't great looking but he had a lot of charisma.

 

Force of character: characters like Captain America and Superman, when they start talking people around them tend to listen.

 

Self-confidence.

 

Jadedness: the inability to be shocked because you've seen it before, and it was probably done better.

[Markdoc]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Never understood the argument about COM being arbitary when you have a stat like PRE' date=' which is arbitary too. (Though it does have more of a combat mechanic than COM did)[/quote']

 

It was an argument that never made sense. All of the Stat.s are arbitrary, as has been pointed out many times. How exactly do you measure "Dexterity"? The only stat. that even had a loose tie to a direct measure was STR.

 

cheers, Mark

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

It was an argument that never made sense. All of the Stat.s are arbitrary, as has been pointed out many times. How exactly do you measure "Dexterity"? The only stat. that even had a loose tie to a direct measure was STR.

 

cheers, Mark

 

Excatly! Hopefully that is what my original post portrayed. I don't get that people would argue that COM as a stat wasn't reflective of 'beauty'-you know, 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder', yet they'll accept that a sword does xD6 of killing or flames and lasers both do 'energy' damage and by default can resist them at the same rate.

[rjcurrie]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Whatever. COM was replaced by something that had an effect similar to many of the optional COM systems that people used. No big deal in my opinion. As a 6E change, it's about the same as changing Seduction to Charm.

 

In fact, I suspect that if Hero had used Striking Appearance since 1E and 6E decided to replace it with a COM characteristic, there would have been a pile of people arguing against the change, many of whom would be the same ones who are arguing that COM should have been kept.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Basically, if you feel the need to add it back in or use COM instead of Striking appearance, you can do that too. After all, HERO is a tool-kit system, so you can do what works best for your group.

[Lucius]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Last time the topic came up, I thought we had a pretty reasonable discussion.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wonders if it was a reasonably pretty discussion

[Martin2]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

So with COM you only got advantages if you were good looking (but not defined in the rules to any great extent)?

 

So all the good looking supers with no interaction skills got bonuses on their interaction skills but the plain looking ones did not?

 

Or did a smart talking but plain looking one also have a high COM? But if they were not talking did they still have a high COM?

 

So you would have to define your COM to interacting skills or just looks?

 

I think I prefare Striking Appearance at least it has clear definitions on the game effect .

 

(Ducks down and runs for cover )

[Opale]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Though I was a big fan of the COM stat in older edition, I have to admit not having it anymore is a great plus in a character creation.

 

Why ? Because now you can define your character the way you like, as ugly or beautiful as you wish (or as the picture shows it) without been "forced" to buy it in character points.

 

See it that way : if you build an attractive character in 5th Ed, you had to buy it for finally few effect except on your own ego and drama creating effect in game.

 

But in 6th Ed, if you build a character either super beautiful or ugly like the Abomination, you don't have to buy anything, except you want it to have effect in game.

 

Opale, Am I not beautiful ? (beware of the rresponse guys)

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Why ? Because now you can define your character the way you like, as ugly or beautiful as you wish (or as the picture shows it) without been "forced" to buy it in character points.

 

Opale, I'm not saying that you in particular are doing this.

 

 

This is another chuckle of mine. The "I want to build a character to conception, unless it interfers with my combat (or insert other) ability".

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

So with COM you only got advantages if you were good looking (but not defined in the rules to any great extent)?

 

So all the good looking supers with no interaction skills got bonuses on their interaction skills but the plain looking ones did not?

 

Or did a smart talking but plain looking one also have a high COM? But if they were not talking did they still have a high COM?

 

So you would have to define your COM to interacting skills or just looks?

 

I think I prefare Striking Appearance at least it has clear definitions on the game effect .

 

(Ducks down and runs for cover )

 

So how is the above questions different from striking appearence? Do you not define what the striking appearence is when bought, such as beauty or fear? So it doesn't work all the time either, only in a predefined situation. So to answer your question, if the COM is based on beauty, thenit only applies to those situations and if its based on cool personality, then it only applies to those situations.