THAC0 Inconsistency

Franpa

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=643614215
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=643614295

I haven't checked it out in the newest BG:EE Beta and I know these example images are taken from Ice Wind Dale but I recall this inconsistency did exist in Baldur's Gate.

What is the issue? Items that provide a positive buff to THAC0 will list a value preceded by a plus sign where as the Inventory screen showed negative buffs preceded with a plus sign!

+1 THAC0 in Inventory UI = Your chance to hit an Armour Class 0 enemy is worsened by 1 point.
-1 THAC0 in Inventory UI = Your chance to hit an Armour Class 0 enemy is improved by 1 point.

+1 THAC0 in item description = Your chance to hit an Armour Class 0 enemy is improved by 1 point.
-1 THAC0 in item description = Your chance to hit an Armour Class 0 enemy is worsened by 1 point.

If this isn't fixed in the current BG: EE beta I'd like to see it fixed as it'd make things notably less confusing.

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Durenas

This is a quirk of ADND 2nd edition. It's one of the reasons why they made the change to attack rolls in 3rd edition and onward. People intuitively equate positive as better and negative as worse, so when your thac0 goes DOWN people think that's bad. Honestly, I don't think this should be changed, since people take one look at an item, see -1 attack and think 'that's worse than what I have now!'.

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Franpa

subtledoctor said:

Amberion said:

This is a quirk of ADND 2nd edition. It's one of the reasons why they made the change to attack rolls in 3rd edition and onward. People intuitively equate positive as better and negative as worse, so when your thac0 goes DOWN people think that's bad. Honestly, I don't think this should be changed, since people take one look at an item, see -1 attack and think 'that's worse than what I have now!'.

It's not just 2e - this is how pre-"advanced" D&D worked as well. There is actually no inconsistency at all here. thac0 is a number, and you have to roll a d20 die to try to beat that number. Naturally, this is easier to do when the number is lower. Old D&D was replete with this "roll to beat a number" mechanic, and nobody had a problem with it. Note it's not just thac0 and AC; notice that saving throws work the same way: a "+1 bonus" results in a -1 adjustment to your effective save score. (But not the score itself - see below.) Neither here nor there, but I wonder why we never see people complaining about this in the context of saving throws...

The mistake people are making now is, they don't understand that's how thac0 works. (Which is natural, because you don't actually roll the dice in a computer game, rhe process is abstracted away.)

When a weapon has a "+1 bonus," it doesn't mean a change to your thac0 score, it means a +1 adjustment to the *roll* against that score. Which is mathematically identical to a -1 adjustment to the score itself.

So I revise my assessment above. Item descriptions should really say something like this:

Attack rolls: +1 bonus

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Yes, I remember my friend explaining that to me as well and I did kinda forget when making my original post that there is a dice roll and also a target that you must beat and that is why the values are the way that they are.

+1 to your dice roll is +1 THAC0 in item description
-1 to what is required THAC0 is -1 THAC0 in Inventory UI

I think adding the word Bonus to the end of the item's THAC0 bonuses would indeed help resolve some of the difficulty in perceiving what is happening. The system as is is a bit messy because like you said, the dice rolls are basically hidden with the way the game currently presents information to the user (I know you can enable To-Hit dice rolls in the combat log, that's not quite the same thing as a static number in a UI somewhere though).

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