Charisma and D&D Elves
Heindrich
Member, Moderator Posts: 2,959
Context:
Now that I am making good progress in ToB, and hope to finish my current BG 2 Vanilla Blind LP in the next week or two, I am actively planning a full saga EE playthrough. Now that I kinda know the storyline, I can actually plan out a RP focused 'plot' of sorts for the adventure. So I've been thinking about which NPCs will form the core of the party, and looking at possible alternative portraits for them.
Whilst looking for possible alt Neera pictures, I noticed something...
It just occurred to me that Neera's Charisma is only 11. I always assumed it was higher because she was an elf, and in the fantasy settings I know better (Tolkien's LotR and Warhammer Fantasy), elves are very much 'more than human'... you know immortal, beautiful, graceful, an idealised version of humanity with pointy ears! Upon further research I noticed that Kivan only has 8 Charisma and Khalid only 9, so it seems that the elves of D&D are much more flawed than Tolkien's counterparts, where I imagine every elf would be a near-perfect physical specimen by human standards... Is this true?
Also I understand that Charisma is not just a measure of physical attractiveness, but also a character's leadership skills and persuasiveness. But is it possible for a Brad Pitt/Jessica Alba look-alike to have a very low Charisma in D&D, and ... erm... need to be careful about who I pick for this... somebody who looks like Jabba the Hutt to have a very High Charisma?
In short, as the thread title indicates, I want some info on elven lore in D&D and a better understanding of Charisma.
Extra:
It seems like Neera was never meant to be 'hot elf girl' in the first place, so perhaps @Astafas' wonderful work is not quite appropriate if I want the pic to reflect her Charisma score...
But I guess I am kinda happy about that, as much as I love a little eye candy in gaming, it kinda bothered me that pretty much all women in gaming have to be extremely attractive and overt with regards to their feminine charms, even though they are often fighting in brutal and grim settings, not to mention it's not remotely realistic.
This does have implications for my RP though... I had intended for Charname to be blown away by Neera's charms, as the first (non-sister) hot young thing he's seen since leaving Candlekeep. Her beauty blinding him to her flaws, and their incompatibility (Chaotic vs Lawful) together. I wanted to try Neera and her new content in a BG EE run, and possibly BG 2EE too, but provide justification for whatever relationship between her and Charname to end, allowing him to get together with Aerie eventually, who is much more suitable. Hmmm... back to the drawing board I guess.
Now that I am making good progress in ToB, and hope to finish my current BG 2 Vanilla Blind LP in the next week or two, I am actively planning a full saga EE playthrough. Now that I kinda know the storyline, I can actually plan out a RP focused 'plot' of sorts for the adventure. So I've been thinking about which NPCs will form the core of the party, and looking at possible alternative portraits for them.
Whilst looking for possible alt Neera pictures, I noticed something...
It just occurred to me that Neera's Charisma is only 11. I always assumed it was higher because she was an elf, and in the fantasy settings I know better (Tolkien's LotR and Warhammer Fantasy), elves are very much 'more than human'... you know immortal, beautiful, graceful, an idealised version of humanity with pointy ears! Upon further research I noticed that Kivan only has 8 Charisma and Khalid only 9, so it seems that the elves of D&D are much more flawed than Tolkien's counterparts, where I imagine every elf would be a near-perfect physical specimen by human standards... Is this true?
Also I understand that Charisma is not just a measure of physical attractiveness, but also a character's leadership skills and persuasiveness. But is it possible for a Brad Pitt/Jessica Alba look-alike to have a very low Charisma in D&D, and ... erm... need to be careful about who I pick for this... somebody who looks like Jabba the Hutt to have a very High Charisma?
In short, as the thread title indicates, I want some info on elven lore in D&D and a better understanding of Charisma.
Extra:
It seems like Neera was never meant to be 'hot elf girl' in the first place, so perhaps @Astafas' wonderful work is not quite appropriate if I want the pic to reflect her Charisma score...
But I guess I am kinda happy about that, as much as I love a little eye candy in gaming, it kinda bothered me that pretty much all women in gaming have to be extremely attractive and overt with regards to their feminine charms, even though they are often fighting in brutal and grim settings, not to mention it's not remotely realistic.
This does have implications for my RP though... I had intended for Charname to be blown away by Neera's charms, as the first (non-sister) hot young thing he's seen since leaving Candlekeep. Her beauty blinding him to her flaws, and their incompatibility (Chaotic vs Lawful) together. I wanted to try Neera and her new content in a BG EE run, and possibly BG 2EE too, but provide justification for whatever relationship between her and Charname to end, allowing him to get together with Aerie eventually, who is much more suitable. Hmmm... back to the drawing board I guess.
0
Comments
Also... I kinda assumed that elven blood would over-ride human imperfections. I mean in real life, mixed race babies usually grow up to be beautiful/handsome people! I mean seriously, I dunno any ugly ones! lol
In relation to her default portrait?
If by 'whine' you mean like how some people think Aerie whines too much, I guess we are just different types of gamers. I am personally much more annoyed by genuinely nasty/deranged/egotistic individuals like Xzar, Montaron and Edwin, than girls who might share a few genuine problems in their lives.
I believe looks only play a tiny part in charisma. Presence and leadership are what I look for... If I can't picture someone leading or inspiring a group of people, then they have average or low charisma.
Also, charisma is more than physical attractiveness. It is a measure of force of personality and ability to lead. For example, Julius Caesar would have had a high charisma - despite having a really bad comb-over (seriously, why do you think he wore a laurel wreath all the time?).
Salient to the topic, notice how elves have a minimum charisma of 8? Keeping in mind that 8-10 is average for the run-of-the-mill types, there aren't supposed to be truly ugly elves.
I happen to really like Neera, and Aerie for that matter; partly because they seem likable and relatable. Almost in a "girl next door" sort of way.
But as HandofTyr suggests, that may be a little off for 2e, at least for a full elf like Aerie. But I think that very sort of alien detachment of Tolkein-esque elves could be counter productive from a charisma perspective. Many people might actually find them too standoffish and odd to actually be appealing, even if they are beautiful.
Given the stats I see amongst the NPC companions, I kinda assumed average would be 11-13 for ability scores... I guess they are all capable adventurers, so perhaps generally strong, fit, fast, intelligent and attractive young things not representative of the general population of the Sword Coast.
Also, whilst having a certain "glamour", Tolkein's elves don't always come across as entirely likeable... Legolas and his father are incredibly stand-offish, and the communities in Lothlorien, Greenwood and Gondolin shut themselves off from the mortal world.
After all, they live for thousands of years, watching mortals flit by from moment to moment... How often do you attempt to charm a mayfly?
And xan cheats due to being an enchanter
"The Charisma score measures a character's persuasiveness, personal magnetism and ability to lead. It is not a reflection of physical attractiveness, although attractiveness certainly plays a roll".
So it's very possibly to have a high charisma while not being attractive, and also to have a low charisma while being attractive.
-------------
The average of 3D6 is 10.5, so the average charisma of a D&D character generated by 6 simple 3D6 rolls is 10-11. In 1st Ed AD&D, the way stat minimums were handled was that if you rolled below the minimum for the race you wanted then you couldn't choose that race. That method doesn't alter the bell curve distribution of results produced by rolling the dice, it just cuts off the lower end - meaning that the average charisma for an elf is still 10-11, even though the minimum is 8 instead of 3. (The average charisma of elves, which is a different thing than the average charisma for an elf, *is* affected by cutting off the lower end of the range, and is 11.34 - higher, but still not supernaturally so.)
The point here is that your chance of being able to create an elf with a charisma of X (where X is a number from 8 to 18) is the same as your chance of being able to create a human with that charisma. There is no mechanism in place to ensure that the elf you could generate is more charismatic than the human you could generate (probabilities being held equal). This is in contrast to dexterity, where the +1 bonus that elves get means that for any particular degree of probability (equal to or above the probability of rolling a 7, the minimum dexterity for an elf), the elf you generate will have a dexterity 1 higher than the human you generate.
Of course, it is important to note that this harsh method of stat generation was (almost) never used. The 1st Ed DMG suggests against it. I mention it because the math to calculate the average charisma for an elf (and the average charisma of elves) using the methods recommended in the DMG is more difficult (or impossible, in the case of systems that allow the player to reassign rolls to desired stats, because there is no practical way to measure the average of the choices all players would make for each possible set of stat rolls). This difficulty also applies to BG and BGII, because of the way that stat points can be redistributed.
That being the case, we can't really talk meaningfully about the average charisma (or dexterity) of BG elves vs BG humans. All we can do is look at their minimums and maximums. From this we can note that (at character creation) the least charismatic of elves is more charismatic than the least charismatic of humans, the least dextrous of elves is more dextrous than the least dextrous of humans, and the most dextrous of elves is more dextrous than the most dextrous of humans.
I interpret this to mean that elves:
1) have a certain something that decreases the impact that annoying personality faults have on other people's impression of them,
2) have a surety and steadiness of movement that precludes the clumsiness that several other species are capable of demonstrating, and
3) have a degree of grace and precision that is capable of being greater than human.
Anyway, Charisma is a measure of personal gravitas and leadership ability, not pretty. Neera is not leadership material, arguably not a very likeable individual (I personally like her, but can very easily see why she would grate on people), and she's not actually that well spoken. She's certainly above average - 9.5 is the "average" human trait - but her being easy on the eyes does not impact on this - unless that's giving her personality a few points' boost.
Since I seem to recall many NPCs in BG are pictures of the same person, note that their Charisma, along with their personalities, is all over the place.
Kivan's a hunk, an uncommunicative, gruff, antisocial hunk. Minimum charisma.
Xan, meanwhile, is kind of a plain looking guy, and he's a completely depressing fellow, but he's got so much Charisma that people think he's great anyway.
If anything, Charisma is overrepresented among BGII's characters, with the average Charisma over all 23 characters being 12.87, including the demure, moderately pathetic Aerie, the bland and antisocial ranger who hates the ladies, the sexist Fighter/Cleric who constantly says that said ladies should get back into the kitchen, the most forgettable and uninteresting Druid on the planet, the Red Wizard with no internal to his internal monologue, and the brain damaged thief who generally does nothing but drool and demand to go down to the graveyard.
Frankly if anything Neera's actually reasonably representing/represented by her stats, everyone else is actually kind of all over the place.
I suspect later game rule sets have abandoned this concept because a character's physical attractiveness falls completely into "role playing"--there is no reason that an elf cannot be "ugly" by traditional standards, perhaps by birth or from injuries suffered in battle.
I guess Neera just doesn't have the potential to grow so much in a leadership capacity.