Appearance and Jealousy

[AlexanderHowl]

The reason for Voice being 10 CP is because it is effectively a level 2 talent that gives a bonus to several skills and +2 reaction. Nowadays, I tend to treat Voice as the Talent of Angelic Voice, which gives a +1 to the Voice skills and +1 reaction per level, up to level 4.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The reason for Voice being 10 CP is because it is effectively a level 2 talent that gives a bonus to several skills and +2 reaction. Nowadays, I tend to treat Voice as the Talent of Angelic Voice, which gives a +1 to the Voice skills and +1 reaction per level, up to level 4.

I don't find that plausible. There is no reason to suppose that Voice is a Talent. The advantage of Voice existed before Talent was even thought of; and it was not placed under the head of Talent, though it perfectly well might have been, just as Mathematical Ability was, or Musical Ability, or some other traits from 3/e. Therefore the authors, playtesters, and editors did not intent to assimilate Voice to Talent at all.

Moreover, in contrast to Talents, whose descriptions emphasize specific capacities for learning and skilled action, the description of Voice focused on physiological traits.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't find that plausible. There is no reason to suppose that Voice is a Talent. The advantage of Voice existed before Talent was even thought of; and it was not placed under the head of Talent, though it perfectly well might have been, just as Mathematical Ability was, or Musical Ability, or some other traits from 3/e. Therefore the authors, playtesters, and editors did not intent to assimilate Voice to Talent at all.

Moreover, in contrast to Talents, whose descriptions emphasize specific capacities for learning and skilled action, the description of Voice focused on physiological traits.

Whether or not it was conceived of as a talent, the fact that it provides a general bonus to a number of skills seems a reasonable justification for pricing it higher than a comparative appearance.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Whether or not it was conceived of as a talent, the fact that it provides a general bonus to a number of skills seems a reasonable justification for pricing it higher than a comparative appearance.

But it's not priced higher than Charisma, or Status, or Social Regard, or a fully effective Reputation. All of those, regardless of how many or how few skill bonuses they provide, are priced at 5 points per +1. And Social Stigma tends to be 5 points per -1, though in general it provides no skill modifiers. This is quite a general pattern. Only appearance is an exception.

And the whole point of even making that argument seems to be to excuse the unsupported claim that appearance has an implicit (Vision-Based, -20%) affecting its cost, even though (a) there is no cost reduction for Voice for (Hearing-Based, -20%), in disregard of the clear fact that (b) there is an implicit cost reduction for (Own and Similar Species Only, -20%) that (c) can be bought off by (Universal, +25%), a pattern that, by itself, is quite sufficient to explain the cost differential.

I refer you also to GURPS 3/e, in which Appearance costs 5 points per +1, just like all the other reaction modifiers (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/3e/gurpslite.pdf). Hideous appearance, for example, is -4 for -20 points, even though it does not apply to "people who cannot see you." Not applying to people who can't see you was not a new element in 4/e. On the other hand, explicitly affecting only your own and closely related races WAS; the 3/e exclusion was only for "totally alien creatures." In 4/e, the modifier applies to a narrower range of races, the cost is reduced, and the cost can be raised back to 5 points/level by having the modifier affect any race that can see you (there is no suggestion that "you get +1 reactions from any race whatever, so long as they can see you" gets a cost reduction).

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

In Basic Set Characters it specifies that sometimes people will be jealous of your appearance and react at a penalty equal to your modifier instead of a bonus. This appears to reduce the cost of the advantage as the advantage is 4 cp per +1 (after standardizing the modifiers) which is 20% cheaper than charisma for the same benefit.

As a GM I've always been unsure how often I should make this come up. Accessibility (Only works a percentage of the time) indicates that for -20% it should fail about 50% of the time. But then appearance only applies to entities that might be attracted to your race at all right? Does that account for any portion of the 20% modifier? If it's even 5% then you'd end up with a 62.5% rate of success which... still to me feels like a lot of jealous people.

So what do people think? How often should appearance cause reaction problems instead of benefits?

Mix-sex resistance band X is cramped at a safehouse. Fear and stress not to mention sexual tension is getting high. One of the agents is really, really, beautiful. Her rival places a phone call to the gestapo, "Send her to a prison, I don't want her anywhere near a man I am involved with. What? She is totally innocent of interfering with any relationship I have? Well, bad breaks for her. That's what she get's for being so beautiful."

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Whether or not it was conceived of as a talent, the fact that it provides a general bonus to a number of skills seems a reasonable justification for pricing it higher than a comparative appearance.

Appearance gives bonuses to some skills. Charisma gives a bonus to a tons of skills, yet doesn't cost more than Voice. Also, when using influence skills reaction bonuses always affect the skill, so the most common use of these skills is affected by all of these traits, making the added benefit of one always affecting a skill vs another only counting on an influence rolls quite minor.

I've always thought that Voice is ever so slightly over-priced at 10 points compared to Appearance (at 4/level, visual only), and Charisma (5/level, always applies), but that having a talent-like effect on some skills that aren't normally influence skills helps balance that. It's clearly not a clumsily written talent though - it gives an outright +2 reaction bonus against everyone that can hear you speak, which is a far broader group than a talent should give a reaction bonus against. Besides as it gives bonuses to eight skills, it's a 10/level talent, so looked at that way it's badly underpriced.