D&D 1E AD&D players and referees, what do you think of ascending AC?

[Andvari]

Speaking as someone who has not run/played AD&D, but has done so for BECMI, which also has descending AC, the only negative of ascending AC to me, is having to convert the AC of monsters and items.

 

[Lanefan]

Simple question. No need for a poll.

I keep looking at the mess that is DMG page 74 and how much easier and quicker it would be to switch to attack bonuses and ascending AC.

For people still playing AD&D, how would you feel about the switch?

While after several beer I might be cajoled into ascending AC - if only until I sober up - I'm still going to use a combat matrix (though quite smoothed out from the as-written version).

One of the poorer 3e design decisions IMO was to make the combat matrix player-facing via changing it to attack bonus, thus adding one more element to the arithmetic a player had to do on every attack and effectively slowing things down. Doing this made it much more of a numbers game, and also destroyed some of the 'mystery' of how the game worked.

It's faster if just one person who is (or quickly becomes) used to the combat matrix sorts it out each time, that being the DM.

 

[Lanefan]

It's been stated that ascending AC was contemplated for 2nd edition AD&D, but in the end they decided not to for reasons of backwards compatibility, so even the game designers realized it was probably better for the game back in the 80's.

I always used to struggle with descending AC, as I calculated it thusly:

*Make attack roll (high number good). Consult my adjusted Thac0. Add or subtract the target AC from the roll.

As a result, switching to

*Make attack roll (high number good). Add my attack bonuses. Compare to target AC.

Was much easier for me.

(As an aside, I often wondered why instead of Thac0, you didn't just roll a d20, subtract your modifiers, and compare to AC, ie, you want to roll low. Seemed like it would be simpler.)

Thac0 just adds an unnecessary extra element to the equation.

Just roll the d20, add the bonuses you know about, tell the DM the result, and let her sort it from there:

Player: "That's 13, plus 2 for sword and 1 for strength: 16."
DM: <quietly tacks on -1 Bane penalty and otherwise very likely already knows the combat matrix adjustments for this character> "You hit!"

 

[Lanefan]

Worse, once 1e/2e started dabbling with a skill system in the form of NWPS, thieves weren't even the skill monkey as fighters got more NWPs than thieves did.

So at minimum to fix the thief:

a) They need to use the cleric attack matrix.

Or have their own, yes.

b) They need to get bonus attacks per round equal to a specialized fighter of half of their level.

Or just speed up the levels at which they roll into multiple attacks; in other words, untie multiple-attack ability from fighting level.

c) They need to gain bonus damage with daggers at name level.

Or be allowed to use a wider variety of weapons...maybe as they level up their allowable list might expand some (and having just now thought of this, now I'm thinking about it for my own game - thanks!).

d) They need to advance Dexterity like a cavalier.

All classes should advance their prime stats like Cavaliers!

g) Their thief skills need to be overhauled so that they are more reliable at low levels.

Not at low levels, but by mid-level they should be somewhat reliable.

h) If it isn't already clear, it should be made clear that they have the same dual wielding capabilities as rangers.

Rangers shouldn't have that ability. No Drizz'ts allowed.

i) Their saving throws need to be reengineered such that they are clearly the best at saving throws depending on luck and reflexes.

And poison. As Thieves are by far the most likely to encounter poison in their day-to-day lives it makes sense they'd have been trained in recognizing and dealing with it even after they've come in contact with it. So, the poison save table needs to be split out from paralyzation and death such that it can be tweaked to give Thieves a break.

j) Their XP advancement table needs to be reconfigured such that they tend to stay at least 1 HD above most classes and that gap increases as the things go on to at least 2 HD by 8th level (they hit 8 by the time most classes hit 6) and at least 3 HD by 16th level (they hit 16 by the time most classes hit 13).

That's probably overkill IMO. One option, though, is that if you don't otherwise give xp for gp, maybe Thieves do get some?

I ignored NWP concerns as I've never used those.

Another quick-and-easy change that would make Thieves a bit more durable would be to give them d8 hit dice rather than d6.

And honestly, the class still wouldn't be that good but it would at least be playable.

I'm running a single-class Thief right now as my character in a game and she's doing OK. There's lots of houserules, but the one change that I've noticed has made a big difference in play is to add longsword to the weapons-allowed list for Thieves.

 

[Nikosandros]

I'm playing and running AD&D currently and I use descending AC. Quite simply, I would never switch.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Note: preemptively stating that all of this is opinion.

Both are easy. I think ascending is a little easier for most people.

I think overall this is true.

The discrepancy increases the less theoretical you are speaking and the more of the nuances of the AD&D game you add. If you pretty much had your to-hit table (or ThAC0) and the enemy had their AC, I think the two options would be neigh interchangeable. The instant the game had "plus" 1 - 5 be a benefit to both armor's armoring and weapons' to-hit, a system with a positive-is-better attack and armor system seems to become more beneficial. Once you add in all the different places* where situational bonuses and penalties start to appear and you have to figure out what the +1 or -4 is applied to the attack roll or to the defense (and if you actually applied a -1x to the number for armor, because it was a +2 bonus to AC, not adding 2 to your to AC), then it really starts to be lopsided towards positive on both sides.
*vision, elevation, facing, or heaven forfend the weapon vs armor table (where every time we had to mouth 'picks are great vs plate, scimitars against bare flesh' to remember if a + was good for the attacker or the defender).

That said (and to finally address your point), while I think the case for ascending is strong, the overall effect is not. We all made descending work, many of us when we were 8-, 10-, 12-years-old. It wasn't hard, but it was a persistent minor burden we all put up with because that's the system we had. If TSR had put out an alternate Ascending version of the game(s)* along with the alternate language versions, I would have snapped them up in a minute.
*AD&D, but also 2e and the basic/classic line.

Surprisingly, climb walls is one of the few things where thieves have reasonable chance of success.
The 1e thief has a lot of problems. {long list of legitimate issues with the Thief}
So at minimum to fix the thief:
{long list of suggested fixes}
And honestly, the class still wouldn't be that good but it would at least be playable.

Quote edited for brevity.

Personally, for a long time I've felt that the splitting out of the 'dungeon-crawling adventurer non-combat skills' into a separate class was the primordial mistake in all this. I wish that, instead of introducing the thief class in Supplement I, Gary had introduced 'the thief rules' -- something where either everyone, or just a Fighting Man* (and the different abilities could be split between those two categories) could do climbing and hiding and detecting traps. Some of them would require 'armor no heavier than _____' to succeed**. Barring that, the Thief class should have just been a variant of the Fighting Man/Fighter class, with access to less armor, but getting the thief ability package alongside fighter hp, saves, and combat options. That (fighter offense, but lessened armor) would make them an interesting complement to the cleric, who got fighter-like armor, but inferior weapons.
*possibly 'and any future class which does not derive a significant portion of its power from the casting of spells' with some kind of rules for what that meant.
**or take off gauntlets or helmet to do, giving more reason for the 'attacking un-helmeted characters' rules to exist.

 

[Voadam]

I still think thieves should have been based on the Gray Mouser as a top tier fencer and used a modified fighter mechanical chassis who gives up armor and shields for his thief skills (using fighter attacks and HD), instead of the Gray Mouser as a former wizard apprentice who can misfire scroll spells as a model that uses a modified magic user chassis who gives up spells for thief skills plus leather armor, short swords, and short bows.

This would have left fighters as heavy armor tanks while giving a functional Errol Flynn non-tank duelist base for thieves, clerics as front line secondary tank casters and healers, and mages as combat artillerist/nukes.

 

[Voadam]

Or be allowed to use a wider variety of weapons...maybe as they level up their allowable list might expand some (and having just now thought of this, now I'm thinking about it for my own game - thanks!).

B/X Basic thieves can use all weapons from the get go. Two handed sword backstabs.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Simple question. No need for a poll.

I keep looking at the mess that is DMG page 74 and how much easier and quicker it would be to switch to attack bonuses and ascending AC.

For people still playing AD&D, how would you feel about the switch?

I'm good either way. Played 1e/2e for many years and don't mind AC going in either direction.

Do you play AD&D? I curious what your motivation for asking this question is.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Both are easy. I think ascending is a little easier for most people.

I generally use ascending AC for most D&D derived games these days (and did last time I was using AD&D, including with a tweak to keep the mathematical effect of the repeating 20s from the 1e matrices). When I ran Godbound, I decided not to bother with the conversion, and used descending AC. No one had any issues with it.

At the moment, I'm running ACKS, which uses it's own bizarre AC variant. I'm using normal, ascending AC. I'm using products with ascending, descending and ACKS-style ascending, and it is simple to convert as required on the fly. I don't even need to think too much about which version any given product is using, you just look at the value, can see what version it's using from context, and convert to ascending if necessary.

Yeah, ACKS takes a bit to get used to but it's a great system.