Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback [SUGGESTION] - Charisma should impact face options

I know that charisma and physical appearance are two different things. But then again it's a well known psychological fact that beautiful people tend to have it easier in coversations and social interactions. At least during the initial interaction.
In the long run a charismatic but not so good looking character is going to win over a beautiful a-hole, especially when it comes to things as leadership, or just finding his place in a group that is forced together by unforeseen circumstances.
But as long as the beautiful person isn't completely inept at making coversation I thinkt hat he/she will have it easier to, lets say, convince a stranger he/she just met to tell him or her the latest rumours, or get the merchant to lower the price a bit on that piece of armor you're looking to buy.
And if you look like a troglodyte your 18 charisma is going to have a hard time compensating for that "first impression" thing. Strangers may turn away from you even before you get the chance to charm them with your silver tongue.

While I don't agree with OP's suggestion to have the charisma stat to impact your face options during character creation. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to add a stat for physical appearance as well and have that stat affect your interactions somewhat. (not going to happen, I know. But still).
And in a world where there are other intelligent being other than humans the phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is even more true. Who knows what a Beholder perceives as beatuy And taking every race perceived notion of beauty in to account during interaction will be a not so easy undertaking.

Intelligence and wisdom should also count to offer options. I mean charisma is how you say things and has to do with persuasion, but wisdom and intelligence might help to say things that make more sense to the other person, hence, lowering the roll difficulty. But I do undestand how that might be too much work and limiting to some players. I think charisma is covered by the persuasion and deceive rolls.

I don't think that the character creation should be limited at all.
I do however think that seduction should be part of persuasion at certain points.

I kinda feel like it's very limiting both in terms of the fantasy of my character and also just thematically that it's always either intimidate someone, trick someone in a really basic way or talk down to someone and explain things to them like they're a child who can't figure out simple things on their own to convince them.
It feels a bit especially silly in games when you basically convince the villain that they're wrong by essentially just saying '' you're wrong, and what you're doing is bad '' and then they act like they've never considered that before lol.
I can't think of any good examples of this really where it makes actual sense, usually there's not much depth at all to persuasion in games.


It'd especially be cool with seduction if you could build up a relationship and trust with someone only for that reason that they genuinely believe in and then you just use them to progress, so something that you could build on over time and sorta condition the NPC into being easily persuaded through seduction.
Kagha could be an example of this, maybe one way or making her switch sides could be to seduce her and build a relationship with her over time and then you start making suggestions and convincing her into things more and more like letting the Tieflings stay etc.
Sorta gradually manipulating her by pulling on her heartstrings instead of just '' hurr durr, u evil staph being evil ''.

that's a really cool idea. I do see a problem with the implementation though. A gradual seduction takes time. I get the feeling that act 1 spans just over a few days, maybe two weeks tops.

Yeah that's true, I was just trying to think of an example on the spot xD.
I guess the gradual seduction would be more of a thing for characters that are more story relevant, while you could also have smaller scale seduction like getting past doors for example or making someone lower their guard so you can get up close and stab them in the back ( maybe for Rogues only? ).
It could even be used against the Companions too, like maybe instead of getting into an actual relationship you could be more sneaky and manipulative about it and make them reveal things.
It could even have consequences down the line when they realize what you're doing.

With Kagha perhaps a better example would be with making her let the Tiefling child go, like use your charms in a more sensual way rather than just trying to appeal to her '' humanity '' if you get what I mean.
Play into her corruption instead of trying to drag her back away from it.

+1