D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Minigiant]

And I think this is really the point to drive home, I think. If everything worked in the same direction, it wouldn't matter if we used ascending or descending AC. Have low rolls be good on the d20* and have all modifiers subtract- just as easy as it is today

I remember telling a friend

"The problem isn't Thac0. It's that everything that makes your Thac0 better sometimes goes up, and sometimes goes down, and sometimes it goes up which gives you a number that goes down."

It is like a criticism I heard of 5e on a podcast today, it feels like different parts of the system was designed by different people who didn't talk until the end.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I kinda feel that there is a rather small window of acceptable play that people allow new players to have. For example, smart play is encouraged, but optimization is frowned upon. Tooning (having a character with no background or personality, often billed as a joke) is bad, but so is having a character with a long backstory are viewed as entitled. You should care about your character and not make stupid decisions (IE charge the dragon) but you shouldn't be upset when your character dies. Considering how much of that flies in the face of how most people are exposed to fantasy gaming, I can see where the problem lies.

I know you're going to hate this, but what you described is exactly how I roleplay. Doing it differently is fine though. My wife is Hickman Revolution (though that context is unfamiliar to her) all the way.

 

[KYRON45]

I’m waiting to see who gets the prize for being right about any of this stuff.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

On Thac0: something about the way my brain works constantly trips me up with descending AC. The PHB didn't do a very good job of teaching me it, and even now that I've learned the trick (subtract to-hit roll from Thac0 to get target AC) it still feels counter-intuitive.

We played D&D from 1989 to 1998 or so with THAC0, played it a ton, and it was still tripping us up, and we're well-educated A/A* in maths players for the most part. When we read "10 ways you can play 3E right now!" (I think in 1998 or 1999) and it explained how to flip THAC0 into a primitive form of BAB, and how to make proficiencies roll-over (less necessary but still), that actually noticeably improved our D&D experience! If you can play a lot, for that long, and still have issues, I don't think its the players that are the problem.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I’m waiting to see who gets the prize for being right about any of this stuff.

chances are the thread's going to get locked before we come to that conclusion i think.

 

[Bae'zel]

Ascending AC just makes "sense"? Having everything be additive instead of inconsistently positives and minuses. There's no need for derision about older D&D rules, things just evolve. That's progress.

Like listing a monster's damage as 2d6 instead of 2-12. Yes, I suppose you could calculate exactly what to roll but... why not just say which dice and how many? That was also an elegant evolution.

We've also come to realize as a society that not everyone has math-intelligence and that's okay. Neurodiversity and all that.

 

[KYRON45]

There is no conclusion to come to. That’s why the temperature goes up.
There’s nothing to be right about.

 

[Remathilis]

Nice bone fides. You might be right about popular opinion, I don't really care. I will say, however, that disagreement on this point is perfectly valid, and I won't just roll over because you can cite examples of agreement with your opinion.

Then there is no point in continuing this discussion. Good bye.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We've also come to realize as a society that not everyone has math-intelligence and that's okay. Neurodiversity and all that.

What gets me about THAC0 was it was fiddly enough that even if you did have math-intelligence, you sometimes doubted yourself and had to redo the calculation, or more rarely, actually got it wrong. Like, I got As in maths at a school that was frequently the #1 school for maths in the UK, and I was being slowed by it!

Just absolutely needed to be replaced, and it was trivial to replace it as it turned out!

 

[mamba]

chances are the thread's going to get locked before we come to that conclusion i think.

the heat death of the universe will come before there is a conclusion