D&D General What term or rule really confused you, when you first started playing?

[Stormonu]

Morale. When and how to check it. Creatures running away after one in a group of 12-20 dies, what is this nonsense?

These days, I wouldn't mind having it back. Fights to the death make a lot less sense to me now than they did before I had to sign up for selective service.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Minus fourth class is better than zeroth class.

The original combat system came from Chainmail.

In Chainmail, there were 8 classes of armor (armor class, get it?), that as the armor went up, so too did the number required to hit it (on 2d6). Weirdly, the Chainmail system had an AC of 1 being the least armored and 8 being the most. But the system mapped directly onto the later OD&D system from the numbers (Chainmail 1 = OD&D 9, or unarmored, and Chainmail 8 = OD&D 2, or Plate + Shield).

So why the shift? As in all things historical, it's ... controversial. Two possibilities:

1. The mind of Gygax. Gygax said, "Eh, I just changed it." (In an interview somewhere).

2. A naval game. Arneson claimed it was inspired by a naval game- naybe Ironclads. But that seems more likely to be the inspiration for hit points.

What we do know is that in the original rules, a first level fighter would have to roll a 20 minus the AC of a target - so a first level fighter would need an 18 to hit AC 2, and an 11 to hit AC 9. Kind of the same as THAC0.

There's a fair amount on this from Jon Peterson, DM David, and the like.

 

[Yora]

Morale depends greatly on the underlying assumption that having fights is undesirable. Because you get the lion's share of your XP from treasure, and most enemies don't carry their treasure on their body.

For many years I've seen people complain how turn undead is annoying because it make you have to chase down your enemies.

 

[TheSword]

Rule zero

It still does

 

[Seramus]

THAC0.

I couldn't figure out why it was 0.
Like, why not use THAC10?
Or make the base AC 0?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Initially, before anyone explained D&D to me? I didn't understand that you needed THREE books (or rather two books and a ring-binder), and just had the PHB and DMG, and made monsters up based on the extremely sparse information I had. For like a month until I actually got taught D&D by an older relative.

After that I don't remember being particularly confused by any concepts as much as annoyed with them.

Oh wait, the unarmed combat table in 2E confused the hell out of us and I don't think we ever made heads or tails of it. Also we didn't even understand what some of the moves were meant to be, like, what the hell is a "rabbit punch"? I asked adults and they didn't know. No internet to check and it wasn't in the dictionary nor could I find it in encyclopedias. Apparently it's punching someone in the back of the head? How the hell would we know that lol?

 

[Bolares]

Playing in empireal when your country uses metric counts?

 

[Dioltach]

THAC0 the acronym. I can't remember whether I first came across it in the 2e PHB or whether it was in 1e (both of which I didn't play until after I started with BECMI), but either way it took a lot of digging to find out what it stood for.

 

[CharlesWallace]

Playing in empireal when your country uses metric counts?

Oh that's interesting. I know that WOTC is releasing the 5E rules in lots of different languages. I wonder if they'll change feet to meters or something? Or do they just change the text from english to spanish and everyone's stuck learning imperial units?

 

[el-remmen]

Natural Healing. This was B/X before we moved to AD&D. I just never saw or thought to look for natural healing rules. We just rolled our hit dice at the end of an adventure and added that amount to our current total, which led to ballooning HP totals if you got through an adventure relatively unscathed - and since no one played clerics when we were 12, no one thought that this system could really be manipulated by a few cure light wounds spells right before getting back to town!