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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Humanophile" data-source="post: 225887" data-attributes="member: 1049">There've been studies that show that rough ideas of what is attractive are fairly universal.  While there's plenty of room for individual taste, I think that the average intelligent creature you deal with would, for example, find a more symetrical form more aesthetically appealing, and as such would have better reactions to them.  It might not be an "I want to fill them with babies" reaction, but even individuals you wouldn't consider sex with (relatives, members of the same sex if you're heterosexual, etc.) are more likely to get a good reaction if they are attractive and more likely to get indifferent to bad ones if they're not.  So while, say, a mind flayer would look for strong, healthy bodies for propogation and highly intelligent/strong minds for feeding, they'd still have a preference for physically attractive individuals as slaves.  And even a kobold or a gnoll would react more favorably to the character in a peaceful, social situation.  But that's all a side-topic to the comeliness issue.Where it ties in to comeliness/charisma, though, comes with the basic fact that Charisma is your ability to get a favorable/preferred response from other individuals, and that good looks tend to enhance that ability.  Comeliness without a modifier attached is just wasted space on a character sheet, and comeliness with a modifier is probably a source of double jeapordy in social dealings.  (Social specialists get double their bonus, most other characters get double the penalties.)  And if you tack Comeliness on as a roll after stats are placed/assigned, you risk sticking characters looking a certain way despite the plans of the player.  (If you let comeliness be rolled/allocated at the same time as the other stats, though, you give most players an extra dump stat.)So to me, all that seems like a lot more hassle than letting the character describe how they look, eyeballing it to make sure it's not too good for their Charisma score, and letting them play it that way.</blockquote>

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