User talk:Spazalicious Chaos/Appearance and Style (3.5e Variant Rule)

The Tarrasque

Is so freaking hawt. --Foxwarrior 20:23, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, he certainly knows how to make an entrance...--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 20:27, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I included some errata to help explain appearance. Also, skin the big t if you kill him- his pelt is worth at least 3500 pp if your friend do a crappy job, more if you have a skilled skinner.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 20:50, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

The appearance check

Does this work well as a mechanic, or is it just a fluffy die roll?--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 21:11, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

It looks like a fluffy die roll to me. The style check does stuff (sets starting attitudes and enhances/diminishes crits/fumbles), but I don't really know what sort of game effect "chang[ing] the target's behavior to comply with the checker primary for appearance" even means. Your example isn't really helpful either, as I have no idea how I would apply it anywhere else. I also don't know under what circumstances or with what action you could roll an appearance check. So... yeah. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 22:46, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Is this a little better?--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 03:16, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

It's better, but still weird. You can now try to get people to react to you in a particular way, but you can't actually modify their attitudes with the roll. So there's limits on what you can get them to do that aren't apparent, and you could arguably do the same thing by rolling style. It might work better to just make it a style thing entirely and drop the appearance except as a determinant of the modifier for style. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 04:19, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

So... can the Tarrasque make an Appearance check to force enemies to fight it in melee with their fists? That would certainly help it deal with its glaring weaknesses. --Foxwarrior 05:12, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

That's actually the idea behind it. The style roll is shock and awe(some) and used for dynamic singularities, like taking a brutal hit like a man or batmanning your way into a room. Appearance checks is carrying yourself in a particaular way, like the Tarrasque toning down it's combat brutishness to draw people in or slut strutting into a tavern to get people to hit on you. Style is for dynamics, appearance is a sustained presentation.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 01:56, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm afraid that still doesn't make any sense to me. I'm similarly uncertain how that's not just a bluff. But ignoring that for now, the mechanics of rolling appearance are not actually written out. You don't give it automatic ranks like you do or style, and you don't indicate which attribute (if any, though I would assume you intend the primary) gets added to the roll. Without any sort of scaling, however, you are setting the roll up to fail against anyone with 10ish ranks in sense motive and auto fail against anyone with 20+ ranks; I'm not sure if this is intentional or not. It's also problematic in conjunction with other sense motive boosters, but I don't actually think that's a solvable problem without turning it into a straight up skill or shifting to some sort of "you primary attribute of appearance is obvious, but you can bluff to hide it and trick people into taking you on those terms" setup.

And grammar nitpick - "primaries" is the plural form and "primary's" is the possessive. Since you're talking about the modifier of the primary attribute, you want the possessive. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 05:45, 3 December 2011 (UTC)