Hzark alerted me to this thread because wanted to know what I thought of it.
In my personal Opinion making APP more important by giving the Courtly skills + or - modifiers on them sounds nice for a oneshot, but not for a campaign. The oneshot it's good because you don't expect to do anything or interact with those characters again. For a Campaign as GM and as a Player it would be problematic.
Say you were in battle fighting valiantly for Arthur and took a major wound and lost APP for it and now all of a sudden your courtly skills suck, people snub you because your APP is too low and you might have had decent skills courtly skills before but they are now down too. As a result of being snubbed by your Liege and even Arthur as a GM I would say that is actually a personal insult and worthy of Loyalty Passion Loss. Because fighting valiantly, earning glory as a hero then being sat far away from everyone is a massive insult to you and your service.
That's the first detriment I see which would be Passion Loss. Due to your skills being modified you cannot make the rolls you used to and thus are snubbed, insulted or shunned by those you knew which in some cases is something which should not happen.
A second would be Antagonistic Trait/Passion Gain, Traits and Passions are great and awesome things in my opinion, but if you are constantly being shat on for not looking good you'll grow resentful, envious, cruel, arbitrary or being to harbor passions such as Hate (Lord) Hate (Lady) Hate (Arthur). Which in the long run unless all the Party has them will be detrimental to Party interaction, which in turn escalates party infighting which can leave players feeling sour and ruining the experience.
Early Retirement is another one which I can be seen done by players left right and center. "Ah so bad rolls which lead to the enemy getting a major wounds over three or so years and aging means I've lost a lot of APP?" (Doesn't have to be APP but if it is then this seriously applies) Said player reads over rules "So wait at this APP which since mine was average and now half my face has been cut up so it is ugly as hell I take negs to courtly skills and now can't attend court because I can't make the roll to let people let me in? I think I'll just retire this character so he can stay home and I can play someone who is more than a murder hobo."
That or they just soldier on and lose Loyalty or even Love and gain Antagonistic Traits/Passions.
Personally I did do something as a Homerule (Well not really) when I looked at the Great Campaign and then Game Master Characters Sheets.
Ygraine had 32 APP, Guenever had 30 APP
They both incited Lustful rolls at +10 to all who saw them, meaning that there is something to that.
So I myself decided to sit down and do the maths because hey APP has to be worth something, the more beautiful a lady or Knight is has to give them some benefit, I mean that's what the GPC has for these two why not expand on that.
So I came up with and this is the original draft I copied it from
'Going to say since APP 30 was +10 lustful , so I'd say
16-17 +2 to Lustful
18-19 +3 to Lustful
20-21 +4 to Lustful
22-23 +5 to Lustful
24-25 +6 to Lustful
26-27 +8 to Lustful
28-29 +9 to Lustful
30-31 +10 to Lustful'
I capped it at 10 because I feel that +10 modifiers to trait rolls is more than enough in my opinion and it works the same as when you're first in someones sight (Or if the GM forgets, when you talk to said character or when they talk to you). Basically it can give them a directed trait or passion towards your character. Or the other way around making APP something more useful say when you try to insight the lustful roll in a young knight if you play a lady or if you want to seduce a young lady as a knight. It's a house rule that I used from established events and rolls in the GPC. It's not perfect but it does make APP more than a dump stat in the games I run, sometimes I use it to negative the resistance as in Chaste of a Lady or Knight, but more often than not my players are looking for more than one night stands.
DEX I agree needs more importance but not too much. From the way I run/play DEX and APP are the seasoning to the STR, SIZ CON because lets face it we're playing Knights not Ambassadors or Ninjas. They are there and have competency (Above 12 for me) is good enough to make the game more interesting but they should not be the focus of skills in any shape or form. Because that brings me to another that I believe should be given more thought before mods are made to stats If One Attribute is directly linked to skills, other Attributes must be linked to appropriate skills or Checks
If I were to rule for the negative penalty and positive gains for Appearance, If I were to accept Dex/2 for certain skills. Should I then add +1 or -1 Bonus Dice for Strength, should I then add +1 or -1 modifiers for CON checks. Should I add positive and negative modifiers for weapons, Appearance, traits because of SIZE.
I'm not sure about you guys but when I run or play my games I want them to be one thing Fun. Adding in things to punish players for me would ruin the Fun both as a GM and as Player. Adding negatives based on Attributes which are actually quite hard to change would make the system antagonistic which in turn would make everyone play balanced Knight which would be very boring since they'd all have similar Attributes meaning they'd be a new baseline that most people would go for because it has the least penalties. When players start the game thinking like that, it will surely damage how the game is going to go if they are fretting like "Oh I could roll my passion and take on this Saxon. Or I could not and not risk losing another Attribute that will net me penalties for losing it more so than other stats.
If a system punishes players for not investing points or simply because they had bad luck on aging rolls or wounds that would make it seem antagonistic towards players which in turn would turn people away from playing. What's the point of playing a Generations game about collecting Glory if you have mandatory switch Knights because they can't be seen at court or what not.
I'm all for NPCS or even players not wanting to talk to someone because they are ugly and scarred enough to be hideous. I am not for saying "Those skills you invested, time, energy and effort are now null because you neglected to increase your APP."
I said it before but I believe games are simply meant to be fun so if a system is set to punishes players in these ways. It's not going to be fun.