Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Yeah I did. I see multiple stat.s all with about the same amount of descriptive text' date=' [b']all [/b] (apart from STR) with 2-3 sentences suggesting possible uses. I really, truly honestly, don't see a significant difference, and it baffles me that people continue to spout the line that there are no rules for COM. The section on CHA contains exactly as many rules on COM as it does on DEX, and that's simple fact. In the CHA description section of RAW COM got exactly as much attention as anything else - STR excepted. The difference, as I have noted is that there are no skills or secondaries based on COM - not that there are no rules for it.

 

So yeah, it bugs the hell out of me when people say there are no rules on COM - when in fact the same amount of text and exactly the same amount of rules guidance is given as for other stat.s, STR excluded. I always assume people who state that simply haven't read the rules. The rules are pretty basic: you can allow a COM roll when appropriate. Of course that's the same rule as for CON and DEX (or PRE or INT): you can allow a CON or DEX roll when appropriate. I'm still not seeing a practical difference here.

 

Markdoc, it seems to be the difference between your interpretation and others' is that you are looking solely at rules presented in the Characteristics section. Reading the rules as a whole, a lot more rules come out related to STR (damage mechanics, among others), DEX (skills, initiative, CV), CON (stunning), BOD (death and dying), INT (perception, skills), EGO (mental combat, EGO rolls, pushing) and PRE (PRE attacks, skills). Where are the comparable rules for COM?

 

All seven (other than STR) have a bit of description in the Characteristics section, but COM is the only one without additional references of greater significance throughout the remaining rules - the other characteristics have application within other sections of the rules. Where is the application of COM?

 

To say there are NO rules whatsoever is clearly wrong - "COM costs 1 CP per 2 points" is clearly a rule. But COM is used minimally within the rules as compared to any other primary characteristic, and what uses it did have were modifiers to mechanics primarily governed by another characteristic (PRE), and not mechanics driven by COM.

 

One other issue alluded to above - negative COM cost points and had a use (as much as positive COM anyway). 6e removed negative characteristics, so negative COM would require a revamping in any case (Hideous Appearance?). Extrapolating same to replace positive COM makes more sense, at least to me, than maintaining two separate mechanics.

[Ninja-Bear]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Let see if I got this straight. The claim is that COM is really just a limited form of PRE. So its good that COM is replaced with a mechanic striking appearence. So why even have the striking appearence mechanic at all? Shouldn't it just be a limited form of PRE from the getgo?

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

And so it is. Striking Appearance is a Talent and, if you check out P 447 of 6e vol 1, it shows how it was constructed using limited PRE.

 

Now, we could argue that all Talents should be removed, and reflected as example powers (Striking Appearance being an example of Characteristics as Powers), but that goes well beyond just Striking Appearance. Speed Reading could be an enhance senses example, and a lot of Talents become examples of Detect.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Yeah I did. I see multiple stat.s all with about the same amount of descriptive text' date=' [b']all [/b] (apart from STR) with 2-3 sentences suggesting possible uses. I really, truly honestly, don't see a significant difference, and it baffles me that people continue to spout the line that there are no rules for COM. The section on CHA contains exactly as many rules on COM as it does on DEX, and that's simple fact. In the CHA description section of RAW COM got exactly as much attention as anything else - STR excepted. The difference, as I have noted is that there are no skills or secondaries based on COM - not that there are no rules for it.

 

So yeah, it bugs the hell out of me when people say there are no rules on COM - when in fact the same amount of text and exactly the same amount of rules guidance is given as for other stat.s, STR excluded. I always assume people who state that simply haven't read the rules. The rules are pretty basic: you can allow a COM roll when appropriate. Of course that's the same rule as for CON and DEX (or PRE or INT): you can allow a CON or DEX roll when appropriate. I'm still not seeing a practical difference here.

 

cheers, Mark

 

You should read better - I never said it had no rules. Not once. I said they were vague. I never said it had less text, but that the text wasn't clear or definitive, especially when you compare it to other texts.

 

If you can't see a difference in the wording of how to use those core Characteristics... well... I can't help you. But there's a very big difference between the wording of the whens and hows.

 

And I have never once said Comliness was a useless stat. I said it was a poorly defined stat.

 

So now, I'm going to assume you've not read the rules, or other peoples posts. Cheers.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

I always figured that the original authors of Hero assumed that the average Hero consumer would be smart enough to figure out what to do with COM without devoting lots of text to it.

 

You're kidding, right? The Hero 5E was bulked up with text, rules, and extra examples for everything... except COM. The authors weren't making any such assumptions in the rest of the book, so why COM? They just didn't know what to do with it, simple as that.

[Greywind]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

5th author was Steve.

[Vulcan]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

And here we go all over again. The people who thought COM was useless start jumping all over the people who thought COM had a purpose and insisting WE are the ones in the wrong. Same thing every time it comes up.

 

I'm out, guys, I'm not even going to lurk on this thread anymore. The script is being followed to the letter, and I have no desire to watch this D-grade film to its end yet again.

[Egyptoid]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Seems simple, either you are playing 6th, or are playing 5th.

 

this is 5th edition:

Denise Richards has a 32 COM

 

================= ======================

 

This is 6th Edition:

Sofia Vergara has the Talent: Striking Appearance - 32FF

 

 

What is the question?

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

And here we go all over again. The people who thought COM was useless start jumping all over the people who thought COM had a purpose and insisting WE are the ones in the wrong. Same thing every time it comes up.

 

I'm out, guys, I'm not even going to lurk on this thread anymore. The script is being followed to the letter, and I have no desire to watch this D-grade film to its end yet again.

 

Nobody said COM was useless... they said the RAW was useless re: COM, which it was. We'll let you know if anything changes.

[Lucius]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Last time the topic came up' date=' I thought we had a pretty reasonable discussion.[/quote']

 

This time, not doing so well

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wonders if it was a reasonably pretty discussion

[ghost-angel]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

And here we go all over again. The people who thought COM was useless start jumping all over the people who thought COM had a purpose and insisting WE are the ones in the wrong. Same thing every time it comes up.

 

I'm out, guys, I'm not even going to lurk on this thread anymore. The script is being followed to the letter, and I have no desire to watch this D-grade film to its end yet again.

 

That's not what's being said, at all. Not even a little bit.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

5th author was Steve.

 

Well, it was Steve w/ Guidelines. The original commission of what became 5th Ed was written some time before Darren and Steve got together.

 

6th Ed is the best example of 'Steve's Vision' of the game.

[The Main Man]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

And so it is. Striking Appearance is a Talent and, if you check out P 447 of 6e vol 1, it shows how it was constructed using limited PRE.

 

Now, we could argue that all Talents should be removed, and reflected as example powers (Striking Appearance being an example of Characteristics as Powers), but that goes well beyond just Striking Appearance. Speed Reading could be an enhance senses example, and a lot of Talents become examples of Detect.

Funny you should suggest that - I've been thinking that for the past couple of weeks. If Talents are just Power builds, why should they exist? They seem redundant to me now. Neat, but redundant. There is next to no practical difference between "Talents," "Super Skills," and "Heroic Feats" in the end, but one if them gets special treatment.

 

Bah, another subject for another thread...

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Funny you should suggest that - I've been thinking that for the past couple of weeks. If Talents are just Power builds, why should they exist? They seem redundant to me now. Neat, but redundant. There is next to no practical difference between "Talents," "Super Skills," and "Heroic Feats" in the end, but one if them gets special treatment.

 

Bah, another subject for another thread...

 

I can see this one going either way. On one hand, Talents are writeups of sample powers intended to serve a specific purpose, especially in 5e and 6e (where they are spelled out in construction using the powers themselves, where 4e had some that were not, at least explicitly). They illustrate uses of the "powers" rules for things that may not be perceived of as powers - Combat Tricks like Deadly Blow, Superskills ,like Animal Friendship, character oddities like Bump of Direction or Eidetic Memory. Non-spellcasters in a Fantasy game might not look to Powers if Talents did not suggest this.

 

On the other hand, they ARE just writeups of sample powers. It would be just as easy to expand the discussion of Powers at p 14 to expand the list of things Powers can be used to simulate, and/or expand the genre by genre discussion to highlight the types of "powers" common to the genre (Fantasy currently has Spells, but could readily be expanded) and deal with these in more depth in genre books, expanding the "example powers" to include more talents specific to the genre (where Combat Luck and Striking Appearance, to pick two, seem like logical inclusions in the core rules as they cross so many genres).

[ghost-angel]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

I kind of think the opposite - some games could use more Talents specific to the Campaign to speed up some of the character creation process, and reduce the number "rules" on the page.

 

Superheroes should have an "Instant Change" Talent

 

Modern Games should have an "Encrypted Radio" Talent (well, that's less Talent and more Equipment, but so common it'd be nice to just right down 'radio headset' and not need the build ever time)

 

I like the idea of what Talents represent beyond the builds - common abilities that aren't always defined within a specific special effect, things that are common enough that entire swaths of the population may have them.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

I kind of think the opposite - some games could use more Talents specific to the Campaign to speed up some of the character creation process' date=' and reduce the number "rules" on the page.[/quote']Agreed 100%. The other day I built characters for my son and daughter. When I finished with one power write-up, the entire power construct was half a Hero Designer column long (Compound Power). So I decided to simplify it down. My son was much more able to read and understand what the power does. He is also not going to need the entire power construct unless he starts learning the guts of the system. For that eventuality, I dumped the construct into another HDC file. Point is that sometimes, the player does not give a flying, spicy, buffalo wing about the minutia of the power construct (power, advantages, limitations). A simple header and brief description are all that is necessary.

 

Example: Elven Agelessness Life Support: Longevity (Immortal) can be shortened to a simple talent; Elven Agelessness. That is a short one, but still cuts the entire print out down to roughly one-third of the previous entry.

 

Now all of that is not to say that the GM should have the power constructs all detailed for points balance and clarity reasons. It doesn't even mean that all simplified output should necessarily be Talents. Talents are just a great way to lump common abilities together for ease of reference.

[The Main Man]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Well, while I have utterly mutated this thread I may as well ride the wave.

 

I would like to restate that I like the idea of Talents, but their designation seems redundant to me. That said, I think there is something to be said of naming sets of powers to give them flavor: Talents, Spells, Super Powers, Psychic Powers, Mutations, Super Skills, Heroic Feats, etc. That said, again, why are Talents treated differently? I realize that they have been around since 1e, but (and here I steer the conversation back on course) like COM, they seem to be a relic.

 

That said, there is something to be said of building a power and just listing the name. Talents do this, and I recall Fantasy HERO characters doing this with Spells. I wonder what it would be like to try that with other things like Super Skills or even Super Powers. Makes me want to play around with HERO Designer Export Formats; create one that condenses Powers down to their names with a companion format that lists the power builds.

 

Er... back on topic back on topic...

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

I'm not sure the D&D approach (write the name of the feat down, then refer to whatever rulebook it's located in whenever you need it) is preferable. However, I like the idea of a "Build Format" character sheet which spells everything out, and an "In Play" character sheet that provides only the elements referenced in play.

 

A lot depends on the actual item - if we just put Comeliness 30 on the character sheet, do we remember that this is Striking Appearance, Great Beauty, +4 to appropriate interaction rolls, or are we scurrying first to look up what Comeliness 30 was built as, and second to look up the effects of Striking Appearance?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Er... back on topic back on topic...

 

It was a boring topic anyway... LUKE! We're gonna have thread drift!

 

I'm not sure the D&D approach (write the name of the feat down, then refer to whatever rulebook it's located in whenever you need it) is preferable. However, I like the idea of a "Build Format" character sheet which spells everything out, and an "In Play" character sheet that provides only the elements referenced in play.

 

A lot depends on the actual item - if we just put Comeliness 30 on the character sheet, do we remember that this is Striking Appearance, Great Beauty, +4 to appropriate interaction rolls, or are we scurrying first to look up what Comeliness 30 was built as, and second to look up the effects of Striking Appearance?

 

As a total approach, I agree with you here - I don't think it would do the game any good.

 

But there are always some abilities that seem a bit universal, or at least widespread: Combat Luck, Danger Sense, Speed Reading, Animal Friendship, Bump Of Direction, Instant Change, Radio-Earbuds, Resistant, .. it's a fairly large list.

 

These, while a build is good for points, or just to get an idea of underlying mechanics - once done it's generally a universally accepted working concept, these "Talents" rarely (if ever) need more than the descriptive title for people to know what's happening.

 

Building a full Character, especially when you get into their unique abilities, power sets, and so on, should remain as crunchy as Hero is.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

You're kidding' date=' right? The Hero 5E was bulked up with text, rules, and extra examples for [i']everything[/i]... except COM. The authors weren't making any such assumptions in the rest of the book, so why COM? They just didn't know what to do with it, simple as that.

 

I was talking about the original authors, Steve Perrin and George Macdonald.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

I kind of think the opposite - some games could use more Talents specific to the Campaign to speed up some of the character creation process, and reduce the number "rules" on the page.

 

Superheroes should have an "Instant Change" Talent

 

Modern Games should have an "Encrypted Radio" Talent (well, that's less Talent and more Equipment, but so common it'd be nice to just right down 'radio headset' and not need the build ever time)

 

I like the idea of what Talents represent beyond the builds - common abilities that aren't always defined within a specific special effect, things that are common enough that entire swaths of the population may have them.

 

Pretty much this.

 

I have always though of Talents as low-powered "Powers" that are more common than full-blown superpowers (magical abilities or whatever) or exotic skills that are difficult to learn. I use them to flesh out characters abilities and to allow them to perform well above average in their chosen profession.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

I was talking about the original authors' date=' Steve Perrin and George Macdonald.[/quote']

 

Do you mean Steve Petersen[sic]? Steve Perrin, IIRC, had some involvement with 5th, but is better known for his involvement with Superworld and Chaosium.

[Lucius]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Do you mean Steve Petersen[sic]? Steve Perrin' date=' IIRC, had some involvement with 5th, but is better known for his involvement with Superworld and Chaosium.[/quote']

 

Wasn't Steve Perrin behind first edition Runequest?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Behind a palindromedry

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

I was talking about the original authors' date=' Steve Perrin and George Macdonald.[/quote']

 

Okay, that makes sense, and thanks for clarifying.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Attractiveness - Comeliness Vs. Striking Appearance

 

Well, while I have utterly mutated this thread I may as well ride the wave.

 

I would like to restate that I like the idea of Talents, but their designation seems redundant to me. That said, I think there is something to be said of naming sets of powers to give them flavor: Talents, Spells, Super Powers, Psychic Powers, Mutations, Super Skills, Heroic Feats, etc. That said, again, why are Talents treated differently? I realize that they have been around since 1e, but (and here I steer the conversation back on course) like COM, they seem to be a relic.

 

I was actually one of the earliest voices on these message boards (well not this message board, but the old...old...old message board..pre-Cybergames!) who encouraged the use of Powers to design custom Talents for characters. I got reamed for it quite often actually. People had a difficult time wrapping their heads around it. I would get reply's like "You can't buy Powers in Fantasy Hero unless you are a Magic User!" I think I had a permanent knot on my forehead from banging it against my computer desk on a nightly basis. You can't possibly imagine my relief when 5th edition came and backed me up on the subject (actually, people started to get the idea when The 4th edition version of The Ultimate Martial Artist was released with the Example Martial Arts powers in the Yengtao temple section)

 

 

That said, there is something to be said of building a power and just listing the name. Talents do this, and I recall Fantasy HERO characters doing this with Spells. I wonder what it would be like to try that with other things like Super Skills or even Super Powers. Makes me want to play around with HERO Designer Export Formats; create one that condenses Powers down to their names with a companion format that lists the power builds.

 

I don't see a problem with doing this. Does it have to be called a Spell, or Talent or Superskill? No. Its a "Special Ability" and that's that. What's important is how it works mechanically. In my Fantasy Hero game I have magical Spells (which require certain rules) and I have Talents (which do not have to follow a specific set of rules, but have other guidelines depending on power level) which can represent inherent magical ability, divine gifts, natural powers and unusual or powerful skills. (i.e. Shapeshifting, Lycanthropy, Animal Friendship, Deadly Blow, Resilience, Eidetic Memory etc)

 

Er... back on topic back on topic...

 

I like this topic better