New players: how to wrap your head around thac0, AC, saves, and other "lower is better" scores
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A nice read
I'll go ahead and shoot a question to see whether I understand this right.
Lets take the same lvl1 Fighter vs Thief with leather armor. Only this time, lets put a regular long sword in fighters hands (which has damage of 1d8).
Now, fighters Thac0 is 20 and the ac for thief is 8, so basically, you hit him if you roll something more than 12, right? So far so good I believe. And this is only to allow you to roll your 8-sided dice for the attack right? Only after this dice roll has checked, you roll that 1d8 to determine the damage you deal to the thief. Bottom line is that armor does not influence the damage of the weapon? If i have rolled 13 with the first roll, then I am able to hit him with the whole 8 true damage from my long sword?
On the unrelated note, maybe you can explain the saving throws?
Cheers and thanks for the article!
(Honestly though, thac0 would mean different thing when AC works in opposite ways)
2e was pretty much the same thing but with unnecessary complexities, and it also has all kinds of ambiguous situations (is +2 thac0 good thing or not?)
That being said, leveling up was always a pain in the neck. Having to change all those saving throw bases was always a little confusing, so I downloaded a program that calculated it for me.
The concept of THAC0 was always pretty easy for me. What was confusing is that even in the P&P books, they never had real consistency. Some spells would give a "-2 bonus to ac", which is actually good, but then some spells or effects would "improve your AC by +2"; which is mechanically bad, but it's supposed to be an improvement, so you have to read between the lines at the intent of the ability and ignore the typo. Some would "increase your THAC0" as a detriment (meaning your THAC0 is now 22 instead of 20), but in BG increased THAC0 is a benefit. Some would give a bonus to your attack roll instead, which is good, some would provide a minus to your attack roll, which is bad, and some would provide a minus to your THAC0, which is good. And then of course there were the double negatives that would specifically say things like, "Monster's AC is decreased by -2 when out in the sunlight," when you know that the monster is supposed to be harmed by sunlight. Does this mean that you subtract negative 2 from the ac total? Or do you add negative 2 to the total? That doesn't make sense, because then it would improve their ac! So you were in effect adding positive 2 to ac, which is the same thing as subtracting negative 2 from the ac. So why didn't they just say add 2 to their ac??! It was clear that the editors did not understand how the game engine worked, so mistakes like that were not found and corrected.
The biggest advantage of AD&D 2e is that it is not linear. 3e is very linear, very rulebound, very specific in what a character is capable of doing and not capable of doing. 2e said, "Here are the some rules that we go by when playing so everyone is on the same page, but your group should do anything that you want. These are just guidelines to speed things up. Anything the DM says goes, because you are making a story together and we want to have fun. The DM is the writer and the players are the readers. You are all actors. And if you don't like something, change it."
3e is definitely more like, "These are the rules, stick to them, don't break them unless you have a logical reason to, because it might upset the balance." Shut up Jaheira!
3e is more about level progression and mechanics than it is about story telling and adventure. I think that they are trying to remedy that mistake with 5e, but 4e totally turned me off to wizards of the coast and I haven't looked back. I play pathfinder when I get the chance, but that's just because people find it easier to understand initially. I would love to play 2e but I don't know anyone who is interested.
I feel like 3e is lawful neutral, and AD&D 2e is chaotic good. 4e is lawful evil, and pathfinder is a nicer lawful neutral. No judgements about 5e yet.
I am your God and I'll interpret the rules how I bloody well like!
That is how I DM pathfinder as well. And it is how I play as a player. What the DM says goes was lost with the adandonment of 2e.
Our DM had the players do our own bonus adjustments. So, for example, a player might have +4 bonuses from various sources, say, a strength bonus, a +1 sword, and a buff spell. The player rolls an 18, but what he calls out to the DM is "22 adjusted". If he rolled a 20, he'd call out "natural 20!", because that's an automatic critical hit.
The DM would then compare the adjusted roll that the player called out to this table on his dungeon master's screen:
There was a separate table for every character class. The one above is for fighter types, who have the most favorable Thac0 progression. The table numbers for clerics and druids to hit would be at least 1 higher, with 2 higher for rogues, and 3 higher for mages.
There were similar tables for saving throws, and they were all printed on the dungeon master's screen for easy reference. They were also printed in the dungeon master's guide, but that thing was the size of a telephone book, making it a slow process to look anything up in it. Those cardboard screens were a must-have item for a smooth tabletop D&D playing experience.
To draw an analogy, if you grew up using DOS, it's pretty easy, and a graphical UI might seem unnecessary, but there's a definite difference in how quickly a new user can pick up Windows as opposed to a command prompt. On the other hand, it was the 2e DMG that told me "Don't you dare remove level limits! If you do that, then humans have to be reduced to worthless peasants and slaves while Elves and Gnomes rule the world! Do you really want to design an entirely alien campaign setting?"
But I think the other side also has a point that the "base attack bonus" (BAB) system from 3rd edition is much more intuitively understandable than the AD&D/2nd edition thac0 system. It is very hard to grasp for many people that "minus 10 AC" total is not some kind of horrible penalty.
"Plus 10 to armor class", and "plus 10 to base attack bonus", on the other hand, sound intuitively just like the bonuses that they are.
It is evidence for the side that says "1st and 2nd edition are needlessly complicated to understand", I think, that the original Baldur's Gate developers messed up the "+" and "-" signs on several of the magic item descriptions in the game, although, as far as I know, they got the actual bonuses or penalties right despite the occasional incorrect descriptions.
Let's say an enemy has AC 20. That's a fantastic AC. Let's say your base attack bonus is 4. You need a total of 20 adjusted to hit that AC. (Natural 20 always hits.) That means you need to roll at least 16 to hit that opponent. Easy peasy, nice and easy.
I love to get my AC in 3E up to 30 or higher, because it makes me almost immune to being hit on anything other than a natural 20, from most enemies. At my having AC 30, an enemy will need a base attack bonus of at least +11 to have a chance to hit me with a 19 (roll of 19 plus 11 equals 30, anything less doesn't hit). Few enemies in most of 3E NWN, for example, have a BAB that high.
I don't have any problem understanding 2E thac0, but the 3E way is much easier to calculate and understand.
I often get my AC up to near 40 by end game in NWN1 or NWN2. At that level of AC, only boss level enemies have any chance to hit me without rolling a natural 20.
Let's say you have a save versus spells of 15. An enemy mage casts a fireball at you for 40 damage. You roll a 15-20 on your save, you take only 20 damage, anything less, you take the full 40 damage.
Finding any way possible to *raise* your saving throws is of extreme importance, since enemy casters and monsters in NWN have a *lot* of "save or die" spells and abilities. I do everything I can in 3E to get those saves up to 20 or higher across the board.
(Higher than 20 is even better, since a lot of spells and abilities debuff those saves, and the AI in NWN loves to cast those spells and abilities at you before the big "save or die" gets used.)
Again, easy peasy, nice and easy. You want those saves at 20, because then, unadjusted, only rolling a 1 will make you fail a save.