A Great Personality

Question: What is the interplay between high Epic Charisma and high Negative Appearance?

An uncomfortable one, sad to say for those on the receiving end. Those two social stats can and do coexist, but they do so in an uneasy and distressing way.

First of all, everything that you would normally have with either of those Epic Attributes is still in play. Your high Epic Charisma makes you a focus of attention and makes your actions and speech relevant and noticeable, whatever form you choose for your Charisma to take; you're noticeable, important, magnetic, and difficult not to pay attention to. Your high Epic Appearance makes people instinctively dislike you, again in whatever form you manifest that; you're hideous, terrifying, disgusting, and you inspire revulsion and fear in those who see you.

Not a fun cocktail for the viewer, right? You're horrifying, but they want to be near you anyway. They're revolted, but they can't take their eyes off you.

The exact specifics of that interaction really depend on a given character's manifestation of their stats, though. The most common combination of those is probably Epic Charisma that manifests as the character being commanding and fearsome, inspiring obedience rather than encouraging friendship, which is then magnified by the Epic Appearance also making anyone who sees her gut-wrenchingly terrified of being around her in the first place. Such characters are powerhouse dictators or generals - people jump when they say jump, not just out of respect but also out of fear. Another way of combining the two would be Epic Charisma that manifests as the character being sympathetic and endearing along with Epic Appearance that makes them physically disgusting or pitiful - the Beauty and the Beast approach, where the physicality is undeniably ugly and unsettling but there's clearly a good heart within that might be able to win people over in spite of the exposed organs or gross gravelly skin. You might also go with a respected old warhorse concept, with your Epic Charisma affecting others as your noble spirit and admirability but your Epic Appearance going along with it as the harsh scars of whatever heroic life you've led. There are tons of ways to combine the two; just decide how Charisma and Appearance happen to appear for your character, and the rest will follow.

Keep in mind, too, that a lot of how social stats affect someone depends upon their roleplaying decisions, so your stats will not always give you a perfect predictor of what others around you will do. Sure, you might be an uggo-monster with an irresistible heart of gold for most people, but it's still possible that a given character has a particular personal issue with your appearance that makes him too grossed out to give your sparkling personality a chance, or that another character notices your hideousness less thanks to having been exposed to worse in her time. There's always a little room for interpretation from the side of the person being affected as well, so don't get hung up on the idea that everyone always has to respond the same way.

If you're a Storyteller and you're wondering how an NPC ought to respond to a PC's Charisma/Appearance happy/ugliness combo, we recommend edging them toward whichever stat is higher; if someone's charismatic but they're more hideous, NPCs are apt to be more freaked out than drawn in, whereas if someone's ugly but they're more charismatic, they're more likely to be forgiving of her physical eccentricities. If both stats are equal, check to see if the NPC has anything in their background or personality that would sway him or her one way or the other, and if not, play it by ear and try to give both stats equal importance based on what the PC is doing. If it's just a conversation, Charisma might make everything fine and dandy, but if the rotting slime monster comes in for a hug, all bets may be off.