3rd edition wraps physical attractiveness to Charisma.

"Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness."

Personally I think it's hard to measure something like that (in either CHA or comliness) since attraction is largely an individual thing. For example: many people find Paris Hilton attractive (this a purely off of looks, nothing else) but I do not find her very attractive at all.
I've worked in Law Enforcement/Corrections for 11 years now...and there have been studies that have shown that a criminal/inmate/etc. is less likely to attack an officer that is well groomed (i.e. shined shoes, clean, pressed uniform,etc.) than a sloppy one. Is this true? I don't know, but it makes sense that someone who is more particuliar in their hygiene & looks has more confidence in themselves than someone who doesn't. This is getting too deep into things for D&D though.
The thing I've wondered about in 3rd edition is why is CHA linked to the "intimidate skill"? A large, burly, ugly beast of a man can't intimidate very well? It makes no sense.

It's useful for social type games, useless for dungeon hacks.

> I notice the current D&D rules do not have comliness as an ability score.

As others have noted, it's wrapped into "Charisma" now (as it was back in 1e days pre-UA, fwiw).


> Is a comliness score only realistic in a less arms and armor campaign?
> Is penciling in character description a more sound way to approach comliness?

Make it a special Feat, IMHO, only available during char-gen; maybe even have "Improved Comliness" and/or "Greater Comliness" available at higher levels. In fact, you could build multiple feat-trees, involving clear-skin regimens and "healthy glow" tans or "fair skin that has never toiled a day in the sun" stuff. Add some skills, such as "Hairdresser (Dex)," "Fashion Sense (Wis)" "Make-up Artist (Dex)" and "Carriage (how you "carry" yourself - posture, grace, etc) (Con - it takes real fortitude to smile pleasantly while the half-orc is scratching her pits and asking if YOU have fleas, too...".

In a game featuring social-skills, these could be very relevant.



> I used comliness on my custom D&D character sheets and I noticed the discrepancy that PC's
> threw their lowest die roll to comliness. 8's and such. Thoughts on comliness?

In a combat-centric game (I presume that's what you mean by "arms and armor"), COM is the natural dump-stat. <flamebait>Only a Bard would see it as a "central" stat, and Bards have always been "marginally effective" PC's, particularly at combat-time...</flamebait>


Note that you really need to get player-buy-in for a campaign in which these "social" and "appearance" Feats and Skills will be as important as (or more important than?) the combat-centric ones so prevalent in the existing core rules...


- Steve S.

I notice the current D&D rules do not have comliness as an ability score. It was in print in the 2 Unearthed Arcana. It gave a bonus to reaction modifiers

I never liked this attribute in the game. if you like and and want to run with it, I say Go for it.