Thac0 with Advantage 90. Beyond Persuasion Checks

Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D gives us permission to be social with people we don’t already know!

What are the rules for social interactions? We’re not talking about personal space and active listening skills, we’re talking about the rules in fantasy roleplaying games that govern our interactions with other characters. What are some best practices for those scenes where our characters keep their weapons sheathed and try to flex their soft skills? That’s what we’re looking at in today’s episode.

From the Bardic College

Comeliness was a short lived ability score that originally showed up in Unearthed Arcana in AD&D 1e. It was an ability score expressly for determining how attractive your character was. While the ability score was removed from AD&D 2e, it did show up in multiple places in AD&D 1e, including Dragon Magazine #110, where we learned that Elminster’s Comeliness was 12. Because of I10 Ravenloft 2: The House of Gryphon Hill, we know that Strahd has a Comeliness of 16. Comeliness also appeared in the World of Greyhawk boxed set from AD&D 1e, expressly so we could find out the Comeliness scores of the Quasi-Deities of that setting . . . but not any of the gods that appear later in the same book. I wonder how many points of damage you have to do to yourself with a hammer to raise your Comeliness score?