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

[Ruin Explorer]

I've never understood the objections to roll-under.

If your odds of doing something are 17% then it's intuitive when rolling the d100 that up to 17 means you succeed and over 17 means you fail. It's more brain-work to flip it around and say you need to roll 83 or higher to succeed.

As @Faolyn points out it's mostly when modifiers become involved that it gets a bit confusing, but usually this is due to the modifiers being badly done by a designer who didn't think about it hard enough in terms of expressing them, i.e. if it's roll-over, you get a +10% bonus to your roll, but to achieve approximately the same thing in roll under, just express it as a +10% bonus to your skill (i.e. the number you have to roll under, not to your roll). But sometimes we've seen clumsy stuff like -10% bonuses and so on and it's like, don't be dumb, think about your rules-design a bit harder!

The only other issue with roll-under (which also applies to roll-over) is if you're switching back and forth in a single game, it can feel really bad, but relatively few games do that (AD&D did, but the design on D&D is pretty wildly primitive, arguably RC D&D, even perhaps BECMI had a more rational/modern design than even 2E).

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

As I noted.


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And yet they were classes (or category as he also uses) of protection. That was the problem because most people (I suppose?) didn't understand that. Chain mail +1 for example did not mean "AC 5 + 1", it was an abbreviation for AC 5 + 1 category better, or AC 4.

ACs in 1E were not "numbers" for you to "add +1" or "subtract -1".

THAC0 was a 2e rule.

While it is nice to see the history of terms, that’s a screen shot of the AD&D DMG, not 2nd edition. Did 2e continue the language to refer to AC in “class” tiers?

 

[Lanefan]

I actually kind of like roll-under, although I rarely get to play in systems that use it (I really want to play Dragonbane, and I have played a lot of GURPS, and one CoC game). However, I can see some "problems" with it that could bother people.

One, as people have mentioned elsewhere in this thread is that modifiers are not always intuitive. A "-3 bonus" is a bit counterintuitive, since we're primed to seeing minuses as negatives and therefore bad. A "+2 penalty" is just as confusing. And as people have said elsewhere in this thread, some games, like AD&D, were very random about how they wrote things. So something might give a +3 bonus, but that actually means subtract 3, but it could also mean the writer always adds 3 to the number they're rolling under--it results in the same thing, but it has a different feel to it. And worse, the writer may not have added the words bonus or penalty, which causes the reader to take an extra second to parse its meaning.

IME when using roll-under it's either a d% roll (e.g. Thief skills) where either

a) the player doesn't know any bonuses or penalties that might be applied due to current in-fiction conditions etc. (e.g. the DM might decide the rain-slick stones make climbing 10% harder, the rain-slickness will have been narrated but the specific penalty won't be) or
b) the DM has noted the target might be different than usual e.g. instead of "Roll under your Dex to cross this slippery bridge" it might be "Roll way under your Dex" or "Roll under half your Dex".

In either case the player rolls the dice and the DM does the rest.

Two, in some games, especially some of the OSR games I've seen where you both roll under your stat for everything and the stats are rolled 3d6, it's pretty easy to fail at early levels. Or even at higher levels, since a lot of those games don't let you easily increase your stats. With a roll-over system, you can set the DCs low enough that low-level characters with middling stats are still likely to succeed at least some of the time. But with roll-under-the-stat system, you may have a stat of 6 or lower, and that's far more likely to fail.

It depends on what the system's being used for, I think, and just how much of it you want to have be affected by the character's level.

For me, some things like the ability to notice something are almost intrinsic to the character and don't change with level: a 10th-level Fighter has about the same chance to notice something as a 1st-level Fighter. (exception: Thief-types who specifically get trained in such things, as reflected by their increasing skills as their levels advance)

That, and at least the games I'm used to don't use straight 3d6 for stat generation but instead use somethng more generous as per either the 1e or 2e DMG (or similar).

And if someone does have a 6 in a stat then failing rolls related to that stat should be de rigeur.

Three, many people like big numbers. You don't really get those in roll-under systems, unless you're using d%s.

I'm not sold on the idea that "people like big numbers" when the game tells them that in some cases lower is better.

These issues can be mitigated by always being consistent with terminology and using point-buy or a basic starting level for your stats like GURPS does, or by being free with bonuses to rolls rather than sticking the rules to them in a little section off to the side.

Consistency of terminology is good as long as the context is also consistent. In 1e, context is everything: if you're talking about a weapon then +3 means a higher number while if you're talking about armour +3 means a lower number.

And round here stats are rolled all the way.

 

[Lanefan]

Not arguing but what do you mean? The player already said what they rolled to the DM who knew the AC with THAC0, and the same thing happened with BAB surely? Maybe I'm missing something?

I never used THAC0, mostly because it added an unnecessary step but in part because it also gave too much information to the players. The combat matrix or BAB or "fight level" is IMO something that should be DM-side info only.

 

[dave2008]

If the posted examples (thanks @dave2008 ) are representative of his work in general, I'd beg to differ.

IDK. I think he is one of greats of D&D artists, even if I am not personally that fond of his style. I do prefer it to other D&D greats: Erol Otus, Tony DiTerlizzi, and Clyde Caldwell. And some of his work are better than others, IMO, just like all artist. All the D&D greats have good and "bad" pieces too.

 

[Lanefan]

As @Faolyn points out it's mostly when modifiers become involved that it gets a bit confusing, but usually this is due to the modifiers being badly done by a designer who didn't think about it hard enough in terms of expressing them, i.e. if it's roll-over, you get a +10% bonus to your roll, but to achieve approximately the same thing in roll under, just express it as a +10% bonus to your skill (i.e. the number you have to roll under, not to your roll).

Indeed, with roll-under a 10% bonus effectively moves the target 10 points higher.

But sometimes we've seen clumsy stuff like -10% bonuses and so on and it's like, don't be dumb, think about your rules-design a bit harder!

The only other issue with roll-under (which also applies to roll-over) is if you're switching back and forth in a single game, it can feel really bad, but relatively few games do that (AD&D did, but the design on D&D is pretty wildly primitive, arguably RC D&D, even perhaps BECMI had a more rational/modern design than even 2E).

We switch back and forth all the time, often from one roll to the next because the next roll is using a different context or mechanic. For example on a roll to hit you want high while on the next roll for noticing whether your damage all sunk in (if you've reason to suspect it didn't) you'd want low.

It's just a matter of knowing the context or mechanic that's tied to the roll you're making, and IME players generally catch on to that pretty fast.

 

[Bae'zel]

As @Faolyn points out it's mostly when modifiers become involved that it gets a bit confusing, but usually this is due to the modifiers being badly done by a designer who didn't think about it hard enough in terms of expressing them, i.e. if it's roll-over, you get a +10% bonus to your roll, but to achieve approximately the same thing in roll under, just express it as a +10% bonus to your skill (i.e. the number you have to roll under, not to your roll). But sometimes we've seen clumsy stuff like -10% bonuses and so on and it's like, don't be dumb, think about your rules-design a bit harder!

The only other issue with roll-under (which also applies to roll-over) is if you're switching back and forth in a single game, it can feel really bad, but relatively few games do that (AD&D did, but the design on D&D is pretty wildly primitive, arguably RC D&D, even perhaps BECMI had a more rational/modern design than even 2E).

One of my “issues” with Against the Darkmaster was just that: the inconsistency of DCs. Basically the universal “truth” is that you roll d100, add your skill value, and if you get 75-99, it’s a partial success, and 100+ is a full success. Everything adds to your roll, the higher end result, the better.

But DC subtracts from your roll (eg -10, -20 etc).

Not sure why they didn’t just nudge the “full success” up incrementally instead. So normal is 100+, slight challenge is 110+, medium is 120+ etc. That would’ve been easier, wouldn’t it?

 

[payn]

Pushing BAB player-side also made it much harder to use as a balancing mechanism through a little gentle tweaking here and there.

And, if the characters wouldn't know their foes' AC right away then neither should the players.

Missing the point, it doesn’t matter if either side knows it’s just not that interesting a mystery.

 

[ezo]

THAC0 was a 2e rule.

It was used in 1E and appear long before 2E came out.

While it is nice to see the history of terms, that’s a screen shot of the AD&D DMG, not 2nd edition. Did 2e continue the language to refer to AC in “class” tiers?

Honestly, I don't recall. I don't have the 2E books anymore.

Regardless, the post was about determining AC for magial armors, nothing to do with THAC0.

And I've already stipulated 2E made moves towards using the AC as an actual value for calculation, not a "class" as 1E uses it.

 

[billd91]

THAC0 was a 2e rule.

While it is nice to see the history of terms, that’s a screen shot of the AD&D DMG, not 2nd edition. Did 2e continue the language to refer to AC in “class” tiers?

It didn't matter if it did or didn't. The effect is the same. If a +1 enchantment on chainmail improved the class of the armor from 5 to 4, it was still just subtracting 1 from the numeric value. When it came to practical use of the bonuses, rolls, and THAC0 value, it's a distinction without a difference.
It may serve to explain why some of the modifiers are positive (enchantments and so on) and some are negative (Dexterity's defense adjustment), but that didn't help much with their usability. All it did was explain why they appeared so contradictory, but knowing that didn't make it much easier to manage or even explain compared to ascending AC values.