Philosophy of beauty and corruption

[Moeba]

I kinda like this discussion. It's beautifully pointless and going nowhere at the moment

I do see a connection between chaos resistance and beauty: at least inner beauty does show in appearance, and I would say it slows corruption. I mean, people do generally think they can see a difference between ugly people with beautiful minds and ugly people with tainted minds. It might not be true, but I believe there's some truth in there at least, and that it does make one more beautiful.
However, a large portion of looking good depends on whether you want to look good and have the knowledge and means to succeed. Still, knowledge of how beauty works is something that repels chaos, I would say; and since chaos' effects make you more ugly, generally, (s)he who wants to look good will have a subliminal aversion of chaos.

But I can understand that people don't like the idea, especially gamers

[Moeba]

There's already an "inner beauty" stat affecting corruption - alignment. Chaotic characters are corrupted faster (AFAIK).

Is this true? Because if so, then I'm against the change as well
EDIT: the IGB says it's true, but that's not the most reliable source...

[JellySlayer]

Only C- and L+ have increased/reduced corruption, respectively. This has been around for a long time.

[grobblewobble]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Or in the eye of the kitten.

genetic-mutation-cyclops-cat-cy.jpg

[szopin]

The longer I think about it the less I like it. Take celebrities for example, great example how beauty corrupts. Somehow I have the feeling an ugly farmer is less prone to chaos being physically connected with nature in what he does rather than an elvish diva that will use her looks for profit

[Grey]

The longer I think about it the less I like it. Take celebrities for example, great example how beauty corrupts. Somehow I have the feeling an ugly farmer is less prone to chaos being physically connected with nature in what he does rather than an elvish diva that will use her looks for profit

That's fame corrupting. The beautiful and innocent farm girl that isn't a celebrity is not corrupted.

Also a look at celebrities who've had plastic surgery shows that imitations of beauty are truly corrupt and vile.

[adom-admin]

That's fame corrupting. The beautiful and innocent farm girl that isn't a celebrity is not corrupted.

Also a look at celebrities who've had plastic surgery shows that imitations of beauty are truly corrupt and vile.

+1 to that.

And please take the following in mind: If we look at beauty from a medieval point of view (and neither a overly sensibilized touchy modern point of view of political correctness or a view inspired by tolkienish stances) medieval people associated evil with ugliness. Warts, scars, humps, ogreish looks, etc. always were associated with cursed or evil people (correctly or not - no need to discuss that). But they also allowed for evil in beautiful people (take Circe, the sorceress, as an example) - but that as the exception and not the rule.

You just need to read literature fro m 19th century England so see how established that mindset was and the farther you go back (Shakespeare anyone?) the more such issues arise.

So I don't see any problem with the general association. Especially as the idea was to make Appearance more useful. The few other ideas I have seen regarding appearance are completely unlikely to ever get implemented because they are just too complicated ("make more beautiful people get other quests…" - hell, what ware they thinking? The challenge right now is to have more quests for chaotic characters which are much more common than beautiful characters given all kinds of criteria to categorize characters… it will be a very long way and probably another 100 crowd funding campaigns before we can start to differentiate quests by attribute scores ;-) ).

OTOH I am happy that there is so much discussion about this. But I stand by my decision: Appearance now affects the corruption rate. We are going to fine tune the details and if other great ideas arise, I'll tackle them, to. BUt I'd really like to see better proposals to make Appearance _really_ somewhat meaningful throughout the game. Charisma also is a cool challenge. Maybe the next one to tackle.

[Iridia]

Part of the confusion seems to be that "chaos" and "chaotic" are getting used for both the chaos alignment and the corruption in Ancardia. But they're different. You can be very nearly a purple j at L+ alignment, or you can be C- and completely untainted by corruption.

ChAoS strikes me as more like an unnatural thing, in the eldritch-abomination sense of unnatural. It's not just grotesque, like an orc or a troll; it's not even truly evil, like a dark elf or a necromancer is. ChAoS is what happens when there's no logic, no patterns, no order. It breaks your mind and turns your body into something that should not be able to exist. ChAoS is a threat to evil beings as well as to good beings; otherwise, the "stupidest follower of chaos" ending would apply to all chaotic (alignment) PCs, not just to chaotic ChAoS knights who closed the gate. As it is, chaotic-aligned characters who close the gate can return to their homes and rule the world with an iron fist, and get better outcomes if they're not corrupted.

Being chaotic-aligned is a different thing from being a follower of ChAoS. ChAoS is a cacophony. It isn't even a code of morality; it can't support anything as coherent as a code. The only reason ChAoS is related to chaotic alignment is that it's so dangerous to mess with that only someone who was willing to risk the safety of the entire world for personal gain would ever support ChAoS to begin with.

If ChAoS is inimical to life-as-we-know-it, if it latches on to your mind and body, then it stands to reason that ugliness would represent either a vulnerability to ChAoS or an outright taint. Ugly people aren't more evil; they're more vulnerable to corruption. Dark elves are beautiful and chaotic; dwarves are lawful but kind of ugly.

The idea of Appearance as a sort of ChAoS-resistance stat appeals to me, but only if it doesn't get muddled up with alignment. C- makes you vulnerable to corruption just like being ugly does, but they shouldn't be the same thing. Otherwise it wouldn't make much sense for Chaotic PCs to close the gate, because they'd be aligned with Andy and his minions. Physical beauty would be a form of anti-ChAoS armor because your PC would have a very orderly, symmetrical physical self, which is harder to corrupt.

If you wanted to put Charisma in as a ChAoS-resistance stat as well, here's an idea: Charisma represents mental order, like Appearance represents physical order. Divide the corruptions up between physical and mental effects. PCs would be more vulnerable to physical corruption with low Appearance, and more vulnerable to mental corruption with low Charisma.

[Stingray1]

Currently to make peace with a monster you have to make them panic, it would be cool if with a very high Charisma you could make peace without the need to make a monster panic.

[Iridia]

I can see that being exploited unless you are only able to do that when you are far, far more powerful than the monster. But it would be a reasonable way to get a lawful boost.