[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Well it's more important that the reaction table functions well with most PC face characters than gods of beauty. Also if you want, say, nymphs to be perfectly beautiful and thus transcendent that means that a god of beauty that's more beautiful than that needs to have some sort of trait to represent that.

Actually, it's most important for a system to support a full range, from 25-point kids fighting against Freddie, to 500+ Exalted Solars and beyond. With your system, being Attractive is mostly not noticed at all.

Originally Posted by Sindri

The relationship between Charisma and manipulation is... complicated. If you ever try to persuade or impress someone you are in a sense trying to manipulate them. If you even try to make a conversation pleasant for someone you are in a sense trying to manipulate them. Is it necessary to cynically manipulate people into doing things that are bad for them but useful for you to do some thing impressive? No you don't need to do that.

This is something that I feel Storyteller/WoD handles . . . well, not better, if we include Social Engineering, but makes a point of distinguishing. There's Appearance, there's Charisma, and there's Manipulation, and they're considered different attributes in WoD. Likewise, in GURPS, there's the Reaction Roll approach, where one tries to act naturally and rely on the natural reaction, the Influence approach, where one tries to push people beyond their natural reactions (at the risk of appearing pushy and getting a negative result), and there's the Manipulation approach, where one pushes the envelope even further, with some chance of an even nastier negative reaction.

There are people with a, what you seem to be calling (and I do not exactly disagree) a cynical approach. They're likely at home with Skinner & Co., and are inclined to see social interaction as a purely push-here-get-result-there thing.
Then there are the incorruptible-pure-cuteness sorts of people, who go through life almost never caring to adjust their social interactions . . . and even our indomitable friendly neighbourhood sociopath tends to like them and come to their help in times of need, without being asked to (unlike for his other close acquaintances).

Manipulation and Influence isn't necessarily about asking people to do something that is bad for them. It's more about the approach, about deliberately replacing what they want to do with what you want them to want. Actively changing moods. Stepping outside the bounds of natural reactions. Applying skill and finesse and technique to social interactions. Adding art or engineering towards that that started out as primal and untamed. It need not necessarily be bad.

Originally Posted by Sindri

You especially don't need to do that if you have the sort of significant circumstantial modifiers that will make future historians point you out in an attempt to refute the Great Man theory. Nor is it manipulative for people with Charisma to leverage that into other social traits. They are legitimately well suited to handling responsibilities that require deft social skills.

Intelligence != Charisma, so no, it does not necessarily imply that they're well-suited to handling the responsibilities they gain through the latter.

As for the theme of refuting the Great Man Theory - actually, it more sounds like an attempt to make individual traits by which characters are differentiated less differentiating them.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Furthermore they are good at social interaction and people like doing things that they are good at and when someone who is good at something spends a lot of time doing it, it's not surprising if they pick up additional traits related to that.

People don't always like doing what they're good at. There are memoirs of great musicians saying that they've been forced to do music throughout their childhoods, for example. And it's quite possible for some person to have interests lying in a different sphere.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Well I feel like the end result should have failure be a significant consideration since it's an important balancing mechanism for Diplomacy. I'm not sure if it's necessary for Influence skills to benefit from Reaction Modifiers if they are already modifying them directly.

Indeed, whether to apply them is a difficult question. But if they don't apply, then (a) Allure becomes significantly better than Appearance for what it does (which is odd, but kinda makes sense), (b) it might become tempting to just bite the bullet and go Reaction Modifiers all the way (despite their reduced usefulness), all the time, because failures become more likely - end result:
across the board nerf of social characters; if someone throws points at being social, said someone will now throw lots of points, and instead of having a Gorgeous Character, a Charismatic Character, and a Pleasant-Sounding-and-Famous Character, you'll get all your faces trying to stack all the traits, because having one trait even at superhuman levels is rather unimpressive.