Is Transcendent the limit?

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by Ragitsu

Or perhaps a limited form of Mind Control?

Artemis: Transcendant Affliction (aura) state of arousal. Cosmic Irresistable.

Aphrodite: Transcendant Affliction (aura) state of ar5ousal Cosmic Tier 3.

[Ragitsu]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

Artemis: Transcendant Affliction (aura) state of arousal. Cosmic Irresistable.

Aphrodite: Transcendant Affliction (aura) state of ar5ousal Cosmic Tier 3.

Oh yeah, the Cosmic Tiers from Powers. I knew those would come in handy eventually.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Ragitsu

I dunno. Xenophilia, anyone?

Anyone who is attracted to a Cthuloid god deserves what he gets.

[PK]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Or Awe.

That seems to be Awe's purpose, at least to me.

Originally Posted by Ragitsu

Or perhaps a limited form of Mind Control?

Both good ways to take it. See the Beauty element in DF5 for just this very approach.

[Ragitsu]

Limitation: not against other deities/gods?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Ragitsu

Limitation: not against other deities/gods?

I think perhaps it is more realistic to say that deities have higher standards, and thus would consider even a Beautiful/Handsome human to be unremarkable and romantically uninteresting.

(What does this say about Zeus? Perhaps that he's a severe case of Lecherous?)

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I think perhaps it is more realistic to say that deities have higher standards, and thus would consider even a Beautiful/Handsome human to be unremarkable and romantically uninteresting.

(What does this say about Zeus? Perhaps that he's a severe case of Lecherous?)

What sort of disadvantage reflects bizarre sexual deviance? Odious Personal Habit: Dirty Human Fancier?

Ok, seriously: If we're going to look at the Greek myths, I think you might be better off discarding the notion that all the gods were Transcendent. I think you might be better off assuming they all have a level or two of Awe, and then relatively normal levels of beauty. Humans, like Arachne* or Helen, seemed to be on par with goddesses quite often, which suggests you had some insanely gorgeous greek chicks running around, or the gods weren't that pretty. Hera, for example, seems no more than Average, and Hephaestus is Ugly.

*Crap, turns out Arachne was cursed for boasting of her weaving skills, which I should have remembered. But I'm quite sure several women got cursed for being "too beautiful," and the gods were jealous.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

*Crap, turns out Arachne was cursed for boasting of her weaving skills, which I should have remembered. But I'm quite sure several women got cursed for being "too beautiful," and the gods were jealous.

Medusa, for one.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Ok, seriously: If we're going to look at the Greek myths, I think you might be better off discarding the notion that all the gods were Transcendent. I think you might be better off assuming they all have a level or two of Awe, and then relatively normal levels of beauty.

I mostly agree, although - perhaps depending which myth you're looking at - someone like Aphrodite might have Transcendent. It's a large part of her schtick, after all; bluntly, the goddess of sex gets to be as sexy as anything can get, in every possible way.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Humans, like Arachne* or Helen, seemed to be on par with goddesses quite often, which suggests you had some insanely gorgeous greek chicks running around, or the gods weren't that pretty. Hera, for example, seems no more than Average, and Hephaestus is Ugly.

Well, do note that Hera was one of the three contestants for the Judgement of Paris, and Paris apparently had some trouble making his mind up. One could suggest that all three were hitting the poor sod with as much of their switchable, scaleable divine Awe power as they reckoned his poor mortal brain could stand, and he was reduced to dithering. Or, noting that we're talking about an allegory here, all three had some kind of limited Mind Control (Conditioning) which worked by steering the target towards devotion to their realm of concern, and he was stuck trying to make his mind up between three offers until Aphrodite's Transcendent visual effect broke the tie.

(And Helen was (a) the certified Most Beautiful Woman In The World - guaranteed so by Aphrodite's promise - and (b) half divine by birth.)

But like I said, the real point here is that it depends which myth you're reading - and watch out for the allegory.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

*Crap, turns out Arachne was cursed for boasting of her weaving skills, which I should have remembered. But I'm quite sure several women got cursed for being "too beautiful," and the gods were jealous.

I think that, in most cases, those women actually got cursed because they - or some idiot of a relative or friend - openly claimed that they were as beautiful as a goddess. Whether they were actually that attractive or not (probably not) was largely beside the point. Greek deities could be horrible jealous entities, to be sure, but they thing they really enjoyed smacking down, this being Greek myth, was hubris.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by aesir23

Medusa, for one.

Ahem. The most common versions of how Medusa got cursed were for copulating with, or being raped by, Poseidon in a temple of Athena.

Of course all those "mortals get cursed by the gods" stories are complicated by the fact that the "people" in question were usually actually local deities and telling the story of how they were cursed/defeated is part of the process of coopting the local cult into that of the god who does the cursing/defeating. Medusa for example was apparently some kind of goddess of protection and Pandora "All gifting" was in fact the local Earth mother goddess.

But that aside, I have no trouble with setting a range of positive divine appearance (apart from the exercise of divine Awe) that ranges from Beautiful (Hera, Demeter, Eris) to Very Beautiful (Aphrodite Pandemos, Artemis), to Transcendent (Aphrodite Ourania)